Flirty Dancing

by Jenny McLachlan

  ‘Beatrice,’ she says, as though she is trying out the word. ‘I had an operation.’ Her voice is slurred.

  ‘I know, Nan. I was so worried –’

  ‘When are the finals?’ she interrupts me.

  ‘Two weeks.’

  ‘You’ll win,’ she says, and then she tries to smile.

  ‘Thanks, Nan.’

  ‘Tell me about it.’ This comes out as a whisper.

  So while Mum does lots of nursey things, I sit next to her bed, holding her hand – trying to ignore the needle held in place with tape and the splatters of brown blood – and tell her all about the semi-finals. Nan stares at me without talking or smiling, which is strange at first, but then I get used to it.

  Before we go, Mum explains that Dad isn’t coming home for a few more weeks because she’s out of the danger period and they really need him on the set. I’m sure she must be disappointed, but her face doesn’t change from her blank expression.

  She’s falling asleep as I say goodbye. ‘Nan, will you come and watch the finals being filmed?’ I ask.

  ‘That would be lovely,’ she manages, but we both know it won’t happen.

  The next few days are a blur of jiving and hand gel as I rehearse and visit Nan in the hospital, squeezing in a bit of school as well.

  Everyone has heard about The Pink Ladies and Jive Monkey getting through to the finals, and in assembly Mrs Pollard instructs each year group to: ‘Watch Starwars on the telly and support your fellow students!’ On Thursday, the local paper turns up and we get taken out of lessons for a photo on the field. The six of us stand shivering in a line waiting to be told what to do.

  ‘Right, can you do something for me?’ asks the woman holding the camera. We all look at her blankly until she adds, ‘You know, how you start or finish your dances, something that will look good in a photo.’ We separate into our two groups, or, rather, Ollie leaves his position next to Pearl and comes next to me. We stand in the close hold, and The Pink Ladies, directed by Pearl, strike an elaborate pose.

  ‘Wonderful!’ says the photographer. ‘Now, you two on the end, the Monkeys, I want you on your own. Do something different.’

  Still in the close hold, Ollie looks at me and frowns. It’s hard for us to pick out a single move from the dance as each step flows into the next. Suddenly, his face lights up and he dips me backwards so my leg flies up in the air, then he turns and grins at the camera.

  ‘Loving it!’ the photographer calls out, snapping away. ‘Right, girls, I want you over by the sign to the school.’

  Ollie eases me back upright. ‘What was that?’ I ask, laughing.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he says, looking panicked. ‘I thought it looked like the sort of move they do in old films, you know, at the end of the dance. Do you think it looked OK?’

  ‘Well, we’ll find out on Saturday.’

  Sure enough, when the paper comes out, there we are on the front page. I’m staring up at Ollie with what appears to be a look of adoration on my face, but I know it’s really a look of shock. The Pink Ladies have a much smaller photo on page four.

  Ha!

  My heart lifts when I see Nan sitting up in bed sucking a drink with a straw. It’s full of clinky ice cubes.

  ‘Just tonic water, I’m afraid –’ her voice is still a bit slurred – ‘but this is better than gin.’ She holds up a button attached to a tube and gives it a couple of clicks. ‘Morphine,’ she explains.

  I show her my Marks & Spencer carrier bags. ‘I got everything you asked for.’ Tonight is Starwars night, and she’s planned another party, but this time it’s in hospital. ‘And I brought this to show you.’ I pass her a copy of the local paper.

  ‘Beatrice! It’s beautiful.’ Nan gazes in awe at the photo of Ollie and me, posing in our school uniforms. ‘Find my nail scissors. I want you to cut it out and stick it on the wall where I can see it.’ I’m still cutting out the picture when a nurse arrives.

  ‘Hello, my love, did you buzz me?’ she asks, pressing a button and turning off the flashing light over Nan’s door.

  ‘Yes, Trish. I wanted to show you this beautiful photo of my granddaughter in the papers.’

  ‘Nan,’ I groan. ‘She’s too busy for that!’ But the nurse doesn’t seem to mind. She has a look at the photo and says that Ollie’s got ‘the body of a swimmer’ and is he my boyfriend?

  ‘No,’ I say quickly.

  ‘Well, you make a gorgeous couple,’ says Trish, which is a sweet lie, and the sort of thing nurses are good at saying. ‘Patients permitting, I’ll be back to watch Starwars with you. After all, I did get my invitation!’ She pulls a piece of paper out of her pocket and waves it as she leaves the room.

  ‘Invitation?’ I say. ‘Nan . . . what have you done?’

  ‘I got Marion to make them for me – look.’ She finds a flyer-sized piece of paper next to her bed and hands it to me. I have to admit, Marion’s not done a bad job. She’s cut and pasted the Starwars logo at the top and below it is a picture of me, my body cropped from a Christmas Day photo. I know this, because I’m wearing a paper hat. In Comic Sans are the words:

  Share a cup of tea and slice of cake with me, and watch my beautiful granddaughter jive her socks off. 8 p.m., Room 14, Friston Ward.

  There is a border of stars around the whole thing and Marion has coloured in some of the stars with a yellow felt tip.

  ‘You must be really proud of me,’ I say, staring at the invitation. I can’t look at her.

  ‘Bea, I’ve been this proud of you from the moment I set eyes on you.’ She picks up my hand. I know what’s coming next. I’ve heard this story so many times. ‘I opened the front door, and there you were in your mum’s arms, this tiny baby staring up at me with huge eyes.’ She smiles at the memory. ‘You looked so determined, so brave, I knew you could do anything you wanted.’

  ‘I might not win, Nan.’

  ‘Of course you will, Bea.’

  There’s a knock at the door. It’s the Polish man who hands round the tea and he’s holding an invitation. It looks like our first guest has arrived. I look down again at the invitation and peer closer at the photo.

  Hang on, what am I wearing?

  ‘Nan, did you give Marion your phone and tell her to choose a photo?’

  ‘That’s right. I’d probably have chosen a different one. Her eyesight is shocking.’

  It’s certainly an interesting picture. Last Christmas, Dad bet me a fiver that I couldn’t fit in Emma’s cat costume, and I proved that I could. It was made of Lycra and I managed to squeeze myself into it. Nan took a photo and it was so funny I sent it to Kat. Afterwards, they had to cut me out of it . . . Emma was not impressed. ‘How many of these did you give out, Nan?’

  ‘Oh, around twenty?’ She sounds vague. Ollie must never see this picture.

  Soon, I’m crammed into the tiny room with Nan, two nurses, tea-man Antoni, Dr Prosser and Marion, getting ready for my second ever TV appearance. As the theme tune starts, I feel the excitement grow in the room. There’s a party atmosphere, helped by the sandwiches and cakes that are arranged on the bed. More people squeeze in to eat a cherry Bakewell and see what all the fuss is about. I perch on the edge of Nan’s bed, squeezing her hand, and when Ollie and I eventually appear on the screen everyone cheers, and I grip Nan’s hand even tighter.

  The nurses ‘oooh’ and ‘aaah’ throughout our dance and even though everyone knows we’re through to the finals, they still clap and cheer when Shad reads out our names. Of course, Nan loves it when I say that she got us dancing together and as the credits roll she tells me she feels better than she has since her operation. Still, it’s clear she’s exhausted: her skin is grey and she’s finding it hard to talk. I wonder how many morphine clicks she had to help her get through this evening.

  The room empties and I’m the last to go.

  ‘Bea,’ she calls as I’m leaving. I stick my head back into the room again. She’s sunk down in her pillows. ‘OK. Off you go. I just wan
ted to see those big brave eyes again.’

  14

  ‘You’re one of the Jive Monkeys, aren’t you?’ says a woman by the tinned fruit. ‘I saw you on TV!’ She says it nice and loud so everyone around us turns to stare. Mum’s sent me down to the Co-op before school to buy some milk and I’ve been spotted. ‘Can I have your photo?’

  I pose for a photo and then she takes another one with us together. ‘OK, bye, Jive Monkey. Good luck!’ she yells as I walk down the aisle.

  If I thought this was strange, then school is much weirder. I am showered with attention. Usually, teachers struggle to remember my name. I get lots of, ‘Um, you with the brown hair, Beth? Katie? Ellie? Don’t tell me . . .’ at which point I put them out of their misery and then they go, ‘That’s it, Bea! Can you read from page twenty-six?’

  Well, today, it’s all . . . Hand these out, Bea . . . Pick a team, Bea . . . Hold my mint tea while I open the door, Bea.

  By the time I get to rehearsal, I’ve signed two autographs, been kissed by an old man (I think he recognised me off TV) and had ‘You suck, Dance Monkey!’ shouted by a man out of a car window. I smile sweetly and wave back. Ha! He’ll have to try much harder than that to upset me . . . Pearl’s toughened me up!

  With just one week until the finals, Ollie and I are now rehearsing for longer than ever before, often not finishing until 10 or 11 p.m. We are all over the new dance, and know it’s looking good, but there is one tiny HUGE problem: I still can’t do any aerial moves.

  Today, even Lulu’s starting to panic. ‘Look, if you two can’t sort this out, you can’t win – simple as that.’ She looks down at us on the floor, where we’ve fallen once again. ‘Without it, the routine has no wow-factor. It’s just a well-executed jive that anyone could perform with enough practice and tuition. If you can master a basic aerial, like the knickerbocker, then all the others will follow. It will look stunning. If you can’t, well, it will just look . . .’

  She leaves us to imagine how tragic it will look . . . in front of millions of viewers. We look away from each other as she tells us off. It’s hopeless. Ray and Lulu have tried everything, but, when it comes to the vital moment, I just can’t turn over beyond a certain point. ‘Bea, tell me honestly, why do you think Ollie will let you fall?’

  What can I say? Each time we attempt an aerial I tell myself that this is it, this time it will work, I just have to follow Lulu’s instructions, launch myself into Ollie’s arms and trust him not to drop me. Everything is fine, then, at the crucial moment, I hesitate for a fraction of a second and I crash down.

  Why don’t I trust Ollie? Pearl. Ollie likes Pearl. How can he like the person whose hobby is hating me? Maybe it wouldn’t matter if I didn’t like him so much. But I do. I like him. I totally like him. Obviously, I can’t tell Lulu this. In fact, I feel my eyes welling up. I look away. ‘I don’t know,’ I say.

  She looks exhausted. ‘OK. We’re all tired. But, whatever it is, I want it sorted out by tomorrow. We might as well call it a day.’

  She goes to help Ray dismantle the sound system.

  Ollie and I remain on the floor.

  ‘Oh, well,’ he says. He’s lying back with his hands under his head, staring at the ceiling.

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Maybe we’ll be able to do it tomorrow.’ He gets up. ‘Right, I’d better go or I’ll be late.’ He looks at his phone, not at me.

  I need to say something, explain what is worrying me and ask him about Pearl, but, really, it’s none of my business. He is my dance partner, not my boyfriend. If I ask him how he can bear to spend time with a girl like Pearl, he’ll know in an instant I like him. And not just his shoulders, all of him: eyes, arms, smile, even his rucksack with the ‘Birthday Girl!’ badge on it.

  And that’s the one thing he can never know, because then I won’t even be able to dance with him.

  When I look up, he has gone.

  15

  As I stand at the bus stop the next morning, I feel small and useless. The bus pulls up, I hold out my pass and climb on board.

  Suddenly, Ollie stands in my way. ‘Sorry, wrong bus,’ he says to the driver, grabbing me by my sleeve and pulling me back on the pavement.

  ‘What’re you doing?’ I ask. Then I notice he’s wearing jeans. ‘Oh, God. It’s non-school uniform day . . . I didn’t know!’

  ‘Bea,’ he says, laughing, ‘stop worrying for one second. It’s not non-school uniform day. I’m skiving and so are you.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘We can’t do aerials because you don’t trust me. Simple as that. I don’t know why. But that’s what I realised last night.’ He looks happy as he says this. ‘So I decided: today we’re going to have such a great day that when we go into rehearsals this afternoon you will trust me.’

  ‘That’s mad.’ He was thinking about me last night?

  ‘Maybe . . . is your mum home?’

  ‘No,’ I say, allowing myself to be pulled back in the direction of my house.

  ‘Good, you need to get changed. Also, we need to ring school and say why we’re not in, otherwise they call home.’

  ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘The seaside!’

  I know, I know, I should insist on going to school. This could get me into deep trouble and if Mum finds out it will be another stressful event for her to cope with. But I don’t say no. Instead I say, ‘I love the seaside!’

  Half an hour later, we’re sitting on a bus heading for Brighton. Speaking with my best ‘lady’ voice, I tell the school secretary that unfortunately my son, Ollie Matthews, has once again ‘got that nasty rash he picks up at rugby training . . . and it’s very itchy’.

  Five minutes later, Ollie rings up and tells them that his daughter, Beatrice Hogg, has been so sick ‘it’s coming out of her nose’.

  We sit on our own on the top deck of the bus and creep towards the coast, stopping at each town on the way. To start off with, I’m terrified that we’ll be spotted by a teacher – at school, I have never even had a detention.

  ‘This is the naughtiest thing I’ve done in my whole life,’ I explain.

  Ollie rolls his eyes, ‘Well then, it’s time you did some naughty things.’

  Still, my stomach churns and it’s only when we get off the bus and are swallowed up in the packed streets of Brighton that I relax and start to enjoy myself. I even forget about my horrible coat that Mum refuses to replace and the way the wind is puffing up my hair and giving me a Marge Simpson.

  First, we go to the pier and play on the slot machines. Ollie dedicates half an hour – and around two hundred 2ps – to winning a plastic key ring with a French sausage on it. At least, we hope it’s a sausage. It’s wearing a beret and carrying a baguette so it’s definitely French. We race motorbikes, but Ollie refuses to have another go with me because I beat him, although he claims it’s because ‘I scream like a bunking schoolgirl’.

  Finally, because our money is going fast, we go on a game called ‘Dance Dance Revolution Supernova II’ and jump around on lit-up plastic squares and ‘move and groove in time to the beat’. The machine’s verdict is: ‘ass’. Ollie’s convinced the lights on the display are broken and it should say ‘Badass’ . . . I’m not so sure.

  We wander along the prom and get some chips, eating them on the pebbly beach, throwing one or two to the seagulls that are lurking around. Behind us, the wind snaps the sails of dinghies that have been pulled up the shore, and ropes slap against masts. The sky is Disney-cartoon blue and the sun warms my face.

  We watch as people fight to control blowing news­papers, play the bongos, argue, cuddle and eat. We don’t need to talk. I let my mind drift back to Pearl and start to get tied up in knots thinking about how she’ll respond to me sitting on the beach with her boyfriend . . . after all, they are going out, aren’t they?

  I look at Ollie and realise that he’s looking at me. Then I have a revelation: why don’t I ask him?

  ‘Ollie, are you and Pearl going out?�
�� My moment of mad fierceness leaves me and I feel my cheeks burn. He screws up his face and looks out to sea. Surely this is a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer. It can’t be that difficult!

  ‘Ah . . . well . . . no. I suppose we were seeing each other, for about five minutes, but then she did something and I told her we should just be friends. You remember, that time I was late for rehearsal?’

  ‘I remember,’ I say, thinking back to my big snotty tears in the car.

  ‘That’s when I told her, or tried to tell her, but she wouldn’t listen. I suppose I should say what she did.’ As he talks he starts to throw stones in my empty paper cup. ‘It’s funny really that such a small thing should bother me so much. She said my dog, Stan, looked like a retard. There was other stuff too, but I hate that word and I love my dog, and once she said it I realised that was it.’

  I join him in the stone throwing. ‘Well, Stan’s in good company,’ I say. ‘She’s always calling me a retard . . . and a fat weirdo ugly rat, but not all at the same time . . . well, she did once.’

  ‘Oh . . . that’s not good,’ says Ollie. ‘Stan got it easy. For the record, Bea, you’re not a fat weirdo ugly rat.’

  ‘Thanks, Ollie, that’s sweet.’ This makes him laugh.

  ‘Hey, any time.’ He shakes out the cup and puts it a bit further away. ‘But, seriously, there’s something not right about Pearl. She can get so angry . . . and aggressive. Have you told her where to go?’

  ‘I’m building up to it, but she’s scary and, well, I’m clearly not.’

  ‘No. You’re like the anti-Pearl. She can be fun, nice even, on her own.’

  ‘I know.’