The Stillness the Dancing

by Wendy Perriam

  All the work-tops were piled with dirty plates. Morna stacked the dishwasher full to overflowing, switched it on. She would do the glasses by hand. She had come to enjoy the ritual of washing-up, at least when David shared it. It had become their substitute for port or brandy after dinner. They talked over the dishes, spun them out, took turns to wash or wipe like a married couple. It had been like a marriage—a happy marriage—so why should …?

  ‘Mum!’ Chris burst into the kitchen, grabbed her round the waist. ‘We got cut off. Daddy was just telling me how he’d bought this really fantastic camera for my birthday, and then the line went dead. It’s a German one, he said, with a telephoto lens and everything. He ordered it from Harrods, so it’s coming direct. I don’t know when, though. I didn’t have a chance to ask—or even thank him. Can I ring him back?’

  ‘No, better not.’ Morna ran some water in the sink. ‘He’ll be trying us and only get the engaged tone. He’s bound to phone again.’

  Chris perched on the kitchen stool, swung her legs. ‘Gosh! I’m so chuffed he remembered. When there wasn’t even a card this morning, I thought it might have slipped his mind. You know how busy he gets with golf and meetings and everything.’

  Morna said nothing. Why the hell shouldn’t Neil remember? His only daughter’s eighteenth birthday was surely as important as a round of golf or some so-called creative meeting to work out a headline for a dog-food or detergent.

  Chris scooped a swirl of icing off a plate, licked her fingers. ‘He said he’s missing me a lot. They all are. They want me to go back for another visit—maybe in a year or two.’

  ‘Yes. Well, you must.’ Morna tried to sound less grudging. Stupid to let one three-minute phone call spoil the party for her. She was probably just tired. She had been up at dawn, cleaning the whole house, doing last-minute party shopping, helping Bea with the food. Bea … Morna put her dish-mop down, slumped against the sink. Wasn’t that the crux? Bea had given her her freedom and unconsciously she feared it. She longed for David, yet was terrified of any formal tie. Ties could break, commitment end in failure.

  She squirted Fairy Liquid into the water, frothed it up with her hands. David had always used too much, said he liked the bubbles. It was the only thing he didn’t ration—was almost reckless with it—sculpting the foam into shapes and towers, playing like a child. She copied him now, trying to make a man as he had fashioned a woman once, with curves—christened it Morna, pretended to be cross when it capsized, then turned round and kissed its more substantial namesake. By the time the kiss had finished, his water had gone cold.

  Things had been good between them, genuinely good. Why not simply trust? After all, they had already proved that they didn’t have the problems which had divided her and Neil. Neil had been always absent, overworking, yet resenting her own work, making her feel guilty if she tried to be a linguist as well as wife; whereas David respected and encouraged her intelligence, shared his work with her, welcomed all her help. Neil’s ambition had always been too large—material ambition which stressed status and possessions. Her simpler life with David was less stressful, more fulfilling. Most important, she didn’t feel a sexual failure, sore and shagged, oppressed. She was the one who had outlawed words like failure, poured scorn on all the sex books. It had been only fake bravado when she said it first, a way to comfort David. Now she meant it. Why should everybody conform to some mythical standard set by the examiners, as if sex were an academic subject, the Common Entrance to Adulthood, the touchstone of existence, the standard by which everyone was judged? If David came too quickly, he was sick, disturbed, in need of therapy. If she remained nervous about oral sex, she was immature, inadequate. According to the books. Yet she had never felt less sick lying close to David in their lurching sofa bed. There were other things besides anatomy or superbly functioning apparatus. Things like closeness, trust, or their crazy games where they hymned each other in Latin or made love as seraphim. That wasn’t totally a joke. There was some spiritual dimension which she could hardly analyse. David believed passionately in souls, but called them an endangered species like osprey or the blue whale. The twentieth century had allowed souls to waste away, devoting its attention to the body, the bit between the legs. She wasn’t sure if she could define the word soul at all. All she knew was that when she was with David, the pat phrase ‘body and soul’ suddenly had meaning.

  She let the hot tap run, luxuriating in water which ran boiling from the tank rather than being coaxed via a kettle from a slow and moody range. It still seemed strange to have instant light and heat. Her first week back, she’d had to stop herself pouncing on stray sticks, collecting scraps of firewood. She pushed the curtain back, peered out—a grudging moon in a dark and windy night. Already April, yet the air was cold and sharp. There would be gales around the island, rattling David‘s windows. Would he be looking out himself, missing her, her breasts?

  ‘Mrs Gordon …’

  She swung round. Chris had wandered off again, but someone else was standing at the door, a girl she hardly knew, a friend of a friend of Martin’s, with long mousy hair and a camouflage of freckles. ‘Sorry, but I’ve smashed a glass.’

  ‘Don’t worry.’ Morna dried her hands, went to fetch a dustpan. ‘I expected to lose one or two.’

  ‘There’s red wine on the carpet, though.’

  ‘Doesn’t matter. We’ll squirt some soda water on it. That’s meant to stop it staining.’

  She followed the girl into the study. The wine had stained already, a dark patch on the pale carpet. She felt a sudden irritation. It did matter. The mark was right bang in the centre of the room, would still show when they pushed the furniture back. The girl had tried to rub it, made it worse, damaged the pile. Easy for David to shrug off spills in an old and shoddy cottage where stains hardly noticed against the general squalor, but a top-grade Wilton carpet, the newest and most expensive in the house, which she and Neil had bought a year before he left …

  Hypocrite. She had just been extolling the simple life, inveighing against Neil’s materialism. She was a materialist herself, had helped Neil choose that carpet, trudged from exclusive store to exclusive store, comparing quality and price. It hadn’t been mere service to her husband, submission to his taste. She herself had cared about her home, spent time and effort touring showrooms, planning colour schemes, insisting always on high standards. Only now did she realise that she had more in common with Neil than she had ever dared admit, even to herself. She had been running him down, trashing their years together, years she had been indulged by him, swaddled in his luxury, taking things for granted she would probably miss if she had to give them up too long.

  She stared down at the stain, felt it smudging her own self, that soul which David valued. Did she really have a soul, or was she more interested in maintaining bourgeois standards, keeping an elegant home? She had berated Neil for conserving the house as a sort of monument, but wasn’t she as bad? She might be less concerned with status, more with comfort and security, but both still tied her to Neil’s values. On the island, she had revelled in the spartan life, where nothing was easy, let alone luxurious. Now she was less sure. Easy to play ascetic for a month or two, when she had a warm and cosy bolt hole to run back to. But supposing David wanted to live that way for ever, not on an island, but in some run-down place which to him was just a shelter or a shell, but to her was home, one she craved to polish and transform, fill with Neil-like trophies. How could it work with David, when she and he were so different in their life-styles, expectations? Wouldn’t they resent each other—he regard her as acquisitive, she depressed by the squalor he called austerity? She had used the word ‘play’—in bed and out of it. Had the whole thing been a game, something temporary and childish which couldn’t last beyond a few short weeks?

  She trailed back to the kitchen to fetch a newspaper, spread Friday’s Times across the stain. The freckled girl was still hovering in the study, muttering apologies. Morna edged her out of the way. ‘I
t’s all right—really. I’ll take care of it.’

  The other guests, sensing her annoyance, had already disappeared—slipped into the hall or joined the dancing couples in the sitting room. Morna picked up the fragments of glass, doused the wine with another squirt of soda water. The phone was shrilling again.

  ‘Chris!’ she shouted through the open door. ‘That’ll be your father ringing back. Take it in my bedroom, will you?’ She didn’t want to overhear another round of whoopee, feel excluded again, childishly resentful. She relaxed as the phone stopped ringing, mopped gingerly at the stain.

  Chris came padding back, breathless from the stairs. ‘Quick, Mum, it’s for you.’

  ‘Oh, no …’ Morna crumpled up her cleaning-rag, sat back on her heels. She couldn’t face Neil again, and why should he want her, anyway, when he had been so cool the first time? ‘Look, tell him I’m … tied up—er … dealing with a breakage.’

  ‘What d’you mean ‘‘him’’? It’s a her—some female who asked for Miss Gordon. I told her that was me, but then she said she wanted Morna Gordon. She sounded rather odd, Mum—sort of all bunged up as if she had a cold.’

  ‘Didn’t you get her name?’

  ‘She wouldn’t give it—said you wouldn’t know her anyway. Look, if you just pick up that phone there, you’ll solve the mystery.’ Chris went to fetch the phone herself, passed it to her mother. ‘I’ll deal with the carpet.’

  ‘No, leave it, darling. You’ll only make it worse.’ Morna remained squatting on her heels, put the receiver to her ear. ‘Hallo, Morna Gordon here. Who’s speaking, please? I beg your pardon. Who? I’m afraid I don’t quite … Oh, I see. You mean David’s …? H … Hallo, Mrs Anthony.’

  She clutched at the chair-leg for support. It couldn’t be David’s mother—not with that flat provincial accent, the mistakes of grammar. She had always imagined Mrs Anthony as upper class, refined; kindly, yes, a good provider, but something of a snob, the sort of person who would censure anyone who didn’t treat the language with as much respect as David did himself. And why in God’s name was she phoning—and so late? As far as she knew, Mrs Anthony was unaware of her existence. David, like herself, was forced to be cagey when it came to the opposite sex. He had admitted that his mother was exceptionally strait-laced. He would never air the fact he had a mistress, let alone divulge her name and phone number. Morna tried to concentrate, block out the burst of music from the hall. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t quite hear what … You … you found my suitcase?’

  Morna could feel the blush burning in her cheeks, creeping down her neck. So David’s mother had come snooping to the island, impounding his possessions, checking up on him. She had left her suitcase there, had travelled to Oban to make her phone call with only her handbag and her waterproofs, still hoping to return to David’s cottage. She hadn’t packed on purpose, couldn’t face the fact she might actually be leaving. And now David’s prissy mother must have come across her things, pounced on make-up, frilly pants and bras—damning evidence that some shameless female was undermining her son’s precious Catholic chastity.

  ‘Yes, I … er … do know David—slightly. I’m just a … colleague. I did a bit of work for him, translation work. I … had to take him a lot of books and stuff—things he needed for his own book. I … er … brought them in a suitcase and … left it there for him—easier then for him to pack them up and …’ Pathetic. She sounded as unconvincing as Chris had done at ten, lying about the strawberries she hadn’t stolen from the next-door neighbour’s garden when her whole mouth was stained red. She would hardly bring books to David from five hundred miles away and not stay a night or two at least. And what about those frilly pants? Hell, though, why should she defend herself? David was a grown man in his thirties. Was he still forbidden girlfriends, still answerable to his mother? Mrs Anthony sounded near-hysterical. She knew the type—those narrow Catholic females, married, but still old maids, who regarded bodies with a squeamish distaste, refusing even to acknowledge the bits below the waist, and who were obsessively determined that any child of theirs be kept pure for God and Mother. So what else had she found? Contraceptives? They had never used them. Dirty magazines? Unthinkable with David. Love letters? The only one which fitted that description was safe in her drawer upstairs.

  ‘Yes, I understand. Y … You got my address from the label on the case—and then phoned directory enquiries.’ Mrs Anthony had already said that twice. She kept repeating things, then breaking off mid-sentence. Half her words were lost, in any case, swamped by an ancient record of the Beatles. Morna shifted the receiver to the other hand. ‘Could you talk a little louder. It’s difficult to hear. There’s a party going on and …’ Why didn’t she stand up to David’s mother, refuse to be terrorised, instead of blushing and prevaricating as if she’d been hauled up in front of Reverend Mother herself? The problem was people were listening in. One or two guests had drifted back to the study and Chris was still hanging around, obviously intrigued. Morna covered the mouthpiece for a moment, gestured to her daughter. ‘Chris, will you go and turn that record down, and shut the door while you’re about it, please.’

  Morna waited till she had gone, took a deep breath in, tried to steady her voice. ‘Now look here, Mrs Anthony. I don’t want to be unpleasant, but …’ She broke off. David’s mother had interrupted her, suddenly cut short all her blathering and blurted something out. Morna swallowed, steadied herself against the chair. The words made no sense. She couldn’t have heard them right. That music was distorting everything. No. Chris had turned it off. There wasn’t any music. Only silence, shrieking silence. She tried to find her own voice. ‘I’m s … sorry, Mrs Anthony. I … I didn’t quite catch …’

  The same words repeated, though less coherently, broken up with sobs. ‘No,’ Morna whispered. ‘Don’t say that. Please don’t say that.’

  No good. She couldn’t stop the words. Wild words flooding out now, disgusting shameful details—things she didn’t want to hear. ‘Stop,’ she shouted. ‘I don’t believe you. You made the whole thing up. You’re a liar. You’re a liar, do you hear?’

  Morna sank back on the carpet, stared down at The Times spread out on the floor. Sweat was beading on her forehead, bowels and stomach churning. ‘Minister resigns,’ she read. ‘Less beef on British menus‘. She turned the page, hand trembling. ‘Record price for painting’, ‘Prison plan delayed ‘. It couldn’t be true, it couldn’t. It would be in the paper otherwise, splashed on the front page, columns and weeping columns of it, blurred and bleeding photographs, headlines, horror stories. She scrabbled through the pages, ripping one or two, fingers clumsy with shock. Arts news, foreign news, ‘Favourite falls at Cheltenham‘. Nothing. Nothing else. It was all a lie, a lie. So why did she feel so sick? She clutched at her stomach, dizzy, out of breath, as if she had run round and round, round and round, like a dazed rat on a treadmill.

  ‘Are you okay, Mrs Gordon?’ Someone squatting down beside her. She didn’t answer. Impossible to speak.

  ‘Hey! You’ve cut your finger. Careful now, there’s still a bit of glass around. I’d better get a Band Aid. You’ve gone quite white.’

  White. Morna watched the scarlet blood trickle onto the paper, obliterate the words. All words lied, were never what they seemed. Strange how a tiny cut could hurt so much, make you feel nauseous and faint. A tall fair girl had gone to find Elastoplast—and Chris. She could hear music, laughter, voices, all mixed up and booming like the sea, yet somewhere far beyond her. Two scuffed suede boots were tracking across the carpet, closing in on her, grey suede boots with buttons, her daughter’s boots. Her daughter’s shadow blocking out the light.

  ‘What happened, Mum? Are you all right?’

  ‘Y.… Yes. Fine.’ Mustn’t spoil a birthday. No, it couldn’t be a birthday, not today. She must have got confused again.

  ‘Who was that weird woman on the phone?’

  ‘Oh, just some …’ Who? She wasn’t sure herself now. David’s mother? No. Impossible
. David was …

  ‘Are you sure you’re okay, Mum? You look quite shaken up. If it’s a deep cut, you ought to go and bathe it.’

  Bathe. Water. Morna shuddered suddenly. Water drowned.

  ‘I’ll go and get some water, shall I—put some disinfectant in?’

  ‘No.’ It came out as a shout. Morna covered her mouth with her hand, didn’t trust it. If she wasn’t careful, it might scream or cry, betray her.

  ‘Well, at least lie down and rest a bit. Come on, I’ll take you up to bed.’

  Morna let herself be led away. Safer to lie down. She couldn’t fall, then. Quieter in the bedroom, away from all the uproar. She leant on her daughter’s arm. Old now, a grandmother already, shambling, tripping on the stairs, being taken to a rest-home. Two girls now, one chopping off a length of sticking plaster.

  ‘It’s not deep, actually. Only a tiny nick.’

  They didn’t know. Too young to understand. It was very deep, the sea, deep enough to drown.

  ‘Will you be okay?’ That was Chris, aching to return to Martin. She had been the same, panting for her man, punished for it now.

  ‘Y.… Yes, of course. Just put out the light, would you. I think I’ll close my eyes a moment.’

  ‘You do that, Mum. We’ll be fine—honestly. You don’t have to stay up.’

  Morna listened to the footsteps retreating down the stairs. Darkness now. Real darkness. One she could never switch off. It could be just a hoax, though. People made joke calls. Little boys, cruel tricksters. The police would have phoned her, wouldn’t they, got in touch, asked questions? Death didn’t happen in that casual way, sneak up on you at parties, mixed up with stained carpets, broken glass. Death was dignified, momentous. Requiems and lilies. The word was wrong itself. Too mild, too puny. No sting in it, no horror. It wasn’t death—not strictly. Drowning was different, two syllables instead of one. Eight letters. Eight hours his body in the water. Or longer still? Eight days?