by Fiona Shaw
She didn’t know when all this was lost. But the start of it must have been when Robert touched another woman on the arm, smiled and said, ‘So pretty.’ She could imagine that now. Then there were the new words he spoke when he came home late, or was angry with her attention, or didn’t want to touch her. She could see now how those moments were notched up, one by one, into something that couldn’t be recovered.
‘That baby gets all your love. Pam warned me, and she was right. You don’t fit in; you don’t understand. You don’t want to. I should have married a local girl.’
But she didn’t know how long it took for it all to be lost between them.
‘So pretty,’ Charlie said, and it was strange and sad to hear him use those words.
Lydia was still upstairs when Dot knocked on the door. When she stood at the top, all done out, Dot clapped her down and Charlie clapped too, his boyish face bright and smiling.
There was an edge to the air, the first cut of autumn. Lydia told Dot what Charlie had said.
‘Too sharp by half, that boy of yours,’ she said. ‘Can’t you just get dressed up for yourself, if you want to?’
‘You know what he means,’ Lydia said.
By the time they reached the Grafton, Lydia’s reluctance had gone. She was hungry to dance. She could feel it in her, the small ball of adrenalin in the pit of her stomach. She chafed with impatience as the others took time with makeup and drinks and finding a good spot to watch from.
‘Haven’t seen you out there for a good while,’ Dot said. ‘They won’t know what’s hit ’em.’
‘Come on then,’ said Lydia.
There was a big band playing, rows of trumpets and saxophones done up smart in bow-ties and red jackets, lifting the brass high and ducking it down. The dance floor was full, couples jiving, skirts swinging, no space to move into, no room to find your step.
The two friends made their way in. Lydia was nervous now, holding back a little.
‘It’s a long time since I last did this,’ she said. ‘I’d forgotten it was so busy.’
Dot took her hand.
‘Come on,’ she said, ‘you’ve got this far.’
Then they were in the thick and Lydia’s senses were full with the smell and the noise and the pulse of it. They began to find their feet, Lydia leading, Dot being the girl, and all at once Lydia was away, inside the music, dancing, flying. Her body was alive, the music ran through her, the rhythm beat in her blood and she had no thought of anything, of anyone. Just herself and the dance.
‘Hit the spot,’ Dot said, ‘hasn’t it?’ Lydia grinned and put a hand on Dot’s hip and spun her.
She’d forgotten how good she was. Better than good. When she was dancing, she could do anything. Change her heart, change her life.
‘Excuse me, may I have the pleasure?’
The young man nodded to Dot as he took Lydia’s hand, and with a quick wink to Lydia, Dot walked off to the side.
They began to dance, and Lydia couldn’t see him. He was too close. All she could get was a sense of him. His cologne, his height, his dark hair. His feet were tight with hers, his body light and strong, as if they had danced together for years.
The man spoke softly. ‘She didn’t mind, your friend?’ he said.
‘Course not. She was longing to sit down for a bit.’ Lydia smiled. ‘Besides, it was an “Excuse Me”.’
He was a real dancer. As good as the American from Minnesota all those years ago.
Too soon the dance was over and they stood side by side, a little out of breath.
‘What’s your name?’ he said.
He told her he was visiting the town on a secondment, and she nodded, though she wasn’t sure what that was. She told him she worked in the wireless factory. She didn’t tell him she was older than he was. She didn’t tell him she had a son, or a husband, though her wedding band was plain to see.
The band was finding its music for the next song and couples were drifting off and drifting on.
On the far side Lydia could see Dot. She caught her eye, and Dot lifted her glass with a smile and stayed where she was.
‘Can I have the next?’ the young man said, and when she nodded yes, he ran across the dance floor and called up to the bandleader. The bandleader turned to his musicians, the musicians shuffled their music again and the young man ran back.
‘What did you ask him?’ she said.
But he only said, ‘The next dance is ours.’
As the band began to play ‘Blue Danube’, Lydia laughed.
‘You want to lift me off my feet?’ she said. ‘They’re playing it very fast.’
‘I want the floor just for us.’
And the floor was theirs. They danced, their bodies as one, no space in between, as if there was nowhere else in the world they could be. When the music stopped he bowed to her, and she thought, I must not lose this.
The bandleader applauded them as they went to the bar, and Lydia caught his wink, though she knew it was meant for the young man.
‘Can I get you a drink?’ he said.
‘A Singapore Sling, please,’ she said, because she’d seen the name somewhere. In a thriller, or a film. She felt high, electric.
Her drink was red, in a long glass with a cherry on the edge and an orange umbrella.
She sipped. It was sweet and sharp and tasted of cherries, of course, and tinned pineapple.
‘It’s delicious,’ she said.
‘You’re beautiful,’ he said. ‘And a fabulous dancer.’
‘It’s the first time for ages.’
‘There’s a first time for everything,’ he said.
She drank her red drink.
‘Come with me,’ he said. ‘Let’s dance another dance and then go and have a drink somewhere else, somewhere quieter.’
‘You know I’m married,’ she said.
‘It’s only a drink.’ His voice was gentle. ‘Because we can’t dance like that and then go our separate ways.’
So they danced again, a slow dance, and she lifted her hands up behind his neck and closed her eyes. She was back again in that quiet place with the noise of the water over stones, the broad, warm rock, and, for a moment, Jean’s hand on her hair.
Beneath her fingers, Lydia felt the young man’s smooth skin, the rise of his spine and then the sharp bristle where the barber had been. She thought of Jean that day, bent down to the stream, and saw again the small mole on the nape of her neck.
When the dance ended, Lydia smiled at the young man and thanked him. She was grateful for what he had let her feel, but she didn’t want to touch him any more. He was careful here in the dance hall, but she knew how quickly that could change. She wanted to keep his tenderness, store it up. When he asked her again to go for a drink, she shook her head, thanked him for the evening, gathered up her coat and went home.
22
Sometimes in the night Charlie would wake suddenly and sit up. He’d wait in the dark a while, listening, and eventually he’d lie down again and drift off to sleep.
Charlie hadn’t seen his father for weeks. He had a jar of honey labelled for him, and a list in his head of things to tell him. But his father never visited and Charlie began to wonder if he’d made a list of the wrong things, and he started a new list, of things he was sure his father would like. The new list wasn’t all true. Charlie couldn’t do ten press-ups and he hadn’t been chosen for the football team. But he thought that if it brought his dad to the house, it wouldn’t matter about the made-up bits and, anyway, he could always change the list at the last minute.
‘It was nothing to do with you,’ his mother told him. ‘Nothing. He loves you, Charlie.’
But Charlie didn’t believe her. That’s why the list was so important. That’s why he listened so hard in the night, because each time he was sure he’d hear his father’s voice returned.
Charlie was at a loose end, the last days of summer. He tried going to the park, but there were no boys knotted round the memorial now and t
he pond was grey. The end of the fine weather had come on hard and fast, with rain, wind and closed-in skies. Charlie had huddled under the big beech tree and watched Dr Markham’s garden give up its glory for the year. The first of the autumn leaves scattered the grass and the bare flowers ducked their heads in apology, their petals crushed and dull on the wet ground. The bees were as busy as the weather would allow, getting in supplies for the winter, but they had no time to do their dances now and if they could have spoken to him, Charlie was sure they would have told him to go home and make ready for the closing-in.
Charlie knew his mother was busy. He knew she was very worried, even though she didn’t say. She was working long shifts at the factory. He often got the shopping for her and had the vegetables scraped before she got home. When she came in, she’d start cleaning, or mending things, and singing fierce tunes to herself. She’d been like this since the weather changed and he was glad she wasn’t crying so much, but he wished she’d stop and play with him, or let him read to her.
He’d read Lydia’s detective books to himself sometimes, picking one from the pile by her bed and opening it at random:
But there I was mistaken. My car slithered through the hedge like butter, and then gave a sickening plunge forward. I saw what was coming, leapt on the seat and would have jumped out. But a branch of hawthorn got me in the chest, lifted me up and held me, while a ton or two of expensive metal slipped below me, bucked and pitched, and then dropped with an almighty smash fifty feet to the bed of the stream.
Charlie liked this kind of story, where cars tumbled down cliffs and heroes threw themselves clear; and he liked stories with gumshoe detectives slouching around the city with guns in their pockets, looking for hoods.
He’d try out bits of the slang, imagining himself as a hard-nosed detective. ‘I gotta pack some real heat today if I’m gonna catch those goons,’ he’d murmur as he went downstairs for breakfast, patting his waistband as if to feel his gun. ‘Kill the boiler, whacko,’ he’d say, bringing Lydia’s bike up hard to a standstill in the street.
The Sunday before school started, they went to the pictures and sat in the three-shilling seats with popcorn, and afterwards she cooked him his favourite, toad-in-the-hole. But when he talked about the film – how he wished his headmaster was like Alastair Sim and that Miss Gossage deserved a nice husband – she didn’t seem to hear him and he had to say things twice, which wasn’t the same. He didn’t know if she was happy or sad, because she wasn’t there.
Lying in bed, Charlie tried to work out how many bees it took to make one jar of honey.
‘Half a teaspoon per bee,’ Dr Markham had told him. She’d dropped a teaspoon into the honey jar and they’d looked at how little that was. More than a lifetime’s work for less than a mouthful of honey. He imagined thousands on thousands of bees filling his bedroom, a swarm covering his lampshade, then the walls and the ceiling, moving and shifting, beating the air and filling his head with the drum of their buzzing.
Charlie hadn’t seen Bobby since he went away to the seaside. But the day before they were back to school, Bobby knocked on the front door. He was carrying a stick of rock with the seaside written through and through.
‘Brought it back for you,’ he said. ‘The water was icy, I’d have worn two pairs of swimmers if I could.’
Charlie grinned to see him.
‘I can top you,’ he said.
And he brought Bobby in and showed him the honey: six full, golden jars in a line on the table with brown paper labels.
‘I wrote the labels for all the jars. But these ones are mine.’
Bobby leaned his elbows on the table and stared at them.
‘Where’d you get it?’ he said.
‘Out of the hives.’
‘You got it out of the beehives?’
Charlie nodded.
‘One’s got your name on it,’ he said, picking out a jar.
‘But didn’t you get stung?’ Bobby said, and Charlie nodded and held up seven fingers.
‘Seven times!’
Bobby’s wide eyes made Charlie feel proud and sure. ‘I’ve got a bee suit and gauntlets,’ he said, ‘but you still get a few.’
23
Lydia walked fast through the night, and as she walked, she spoke to herself, hurriedly, below her breath.
‘He’s fine, he’s sleeping. You know how deep he sleeps. Just don’t think. You left the note in case he wakes. It’s clear tonight, cool. It’s autumn all right. Must put oil on my bike chain, Charlie will do it. Must mend the back gate. Maybe I can do that. But if he won’t pay the rent, if he’s going to get me out, if he’s going to, but he wouldn’t surely, not with Charlie, so mend the gate, Lydia …’
Talk, don’t think. That’s what she was doing. Because what she was doing was mad. Her body was doing it, not her mind. Her body that had woken her again tonight an hour, two hours after sleep at last; her body that had got up and pulled on some clothes, written a note for Charlie in case he woke, found her house keys and taken her to the front door and out into the quiet night. Just her body.
Lydia didn’t like being alone on the streets at this time and she walked quickly, setting her shoes down sharp, clack-clack, like a warning, echoing up the sides of the empty streets and down again.
‘Up to the corner and right; up to the corner, turn, cross the street, down to the pillar-box and there’s the tree you like in spring but it smells of dog piss tonight, keep going to the bottom and then cross. Cross at the Belisha beacon, Charlie. No need to beware of motor cars tonight.’
Somebody cried out; a young woman, or an old man, she couldn’t tell.
She walked down to the park and round the curve of its railings, touching a finger along the iron till it was grubby black, she could feel it, in the grubby dark.
Leaving the park, she was out of the streets and into the roads and the avenues. So wide at night, you could get lost crossing them, lose your bearings and forget who you were.
Lydia checked the road name by the light of the moon. Something flitted over the pavement, something else took flight. She crossed the road and walked more slowly. The house was there, in the space beyond her sight, just there.
The porch light was on. People needed to be able to see the doorbell when they came here in the night. People in an emergency. People who needed a doctor. She put out her finger, and then paused. What if Jean wasn’t there? Had been called out? Lydia couldn’t see the car. She pressed the bell.
The sound rang along her spine and out into the night, and afterwards the silence was even louder. Taking deep breaths to calm herself, she stood and waited.
A light went on upstairs, then in the hall and it shone through the stained glass so that Lydia stood in squares of drifted colour.
The door opened. Jean stood on the threshold, a dressing gown wrapped about her, her curly hair skewed with sleep.
‘Lydia?’
‘I had to come.’
‘Are you … Is Charlie?’
‘Can I come in?’
Standing in the hall, under the electric light’s neutral glare, Lydia stared at the white-black-white-black floor. Jean’s feet were bare and brown with white lines across them from where her sandals had been.
‘Is everything all right?’ Jean said.
‘I couldn’t sleep.’
Jean nodded.
‘That’s your doctor’s nod,’ Lydia said. ‘But I’m not here because I’m ill.’
‘You sound angry,’ Jean said.
‘I’ve barely seen you these last few weeks. I know why that is, but I went dancing two weeks ago, and I’m not sleeping and now I’ve come here.’
‘Let’s sit down,’ Jean said, gesturing.
‘I could easily find a nice man. Dot tells me so every time we go out. A nice man who’d be kind to me, and kind to Charlie.’
Jean put a hand through her hair and stepped back and leaned against the wall, her movements still freighted with sleep. She shut her eyes.
‘I know you’re tired,’ Lydia said. ‘I can go again.’
Jean kept her eyes closed.
‘No, don’t go,’ she said.
‘I’ve come without thinking,’ Lydia said. ‘I didn’t want to think because I don’t know how to. But here I am now and I still don’t know what to think.’
‘You’re in my dreams,’ Jean said.
Lydia felt her head spin and her heart race. ‘I don’t know what’s happening,’ she said.
She dug her nails into her palms until they stung and her sight cleared. Then she stepped forward, coming close enough to feel Jean’s breath against her cheek. She smoothed away the curls of hair that lay like sleep across Jean’s face and then softly, so softly that she shut her own eyes to feel it, ran a finger down the line of her cheek. She paused, waiting for Jean to shy away, or turn away. But Jean was absolutely still.
Lydia didn’t know how long they stood like that in the silence, in the dark hall, while she traced Jean’s face with her fingers – around her jaw, her straight nose, feeling her smile, which came out of one side of her mouth when she was nervous. She ran a finger over her eyebrows feeling for, but not finding, the fine scar cut through above her left eye from a childhood fall. She touched her cheeks, the skin and the handsome cheekbones. This woman with her waiting face, her waiting body.