There Should Be More Dancing

by Rosalie Ham

  About the Book

  Filled with shocking wisdom and bouts of love, There Should Be More Dancing is a darkly humorous portrait of a family and the quiet grudges along a suburban street.

  Margery Blandon has led an upright, principled life guided by the wisdom of desktop calendars. Now she suspects that her firstborn, Walter, her champion and closest ally, has betrayed her. She suspects Morris, her second son, might have committed a crime, and that her only daughter, Judith, is trying to kill her. Then there’s Pat, her lifelong neighbour and enemy, now demented, who possibly knows the truth about what went wrong. Should she throw herself from the 43rd floor of the Tropic Hotel, or should she abandon everything she believes and embrace her enemy for the sake of what’s right?

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  Title

  Part One

  Part Two

  Part Three

  Part Four

  Part Five

  About the Author

  Acknowledgements

  Copyright Notice

  More at Random House Australia

  I’m not going. And I’m not living with her.

  I’d sooner die.

  Last week, they moved Florence into my home. The second I laid eyes on her standing there in my doorway, with her Ava Gardner hair and Lana Turner bust, I said to myself, ‘This isn’t going to work.’

  She’s not my type at all. For a start, she’s a common barmaid. And, in the end, she turned out to be nothing less than a thief, a liar and an adulteress.

  One week we lasted together, and then the truth came out.

  You see, there’s been a conspiracy. I found out on Sunday that for almost sixty years the entire neighbourhood, everyone in fact, knew things that I didn’t know, things I should have known. And there have been plots against me. Shockingly, Walter, my firstborn, was in on them as well. He says he wasn’t. But how can I trust what Walter says now? How can I trust what anyone says?

  Today my heart is aching. I can feel it. It’s gasping, like a fish on a beach, because my own children have broken it.

  In fact, everyone I’ve known for the last sixty years has betrayed me.

  So, this is my final day. I’ve come here to throw myself to my death. I know what will happen to my body, my hands and my head. I know it’ll be quick, but I can’t jump yet because at present there’s too many people in the foyer, so I’ve had to book in for the night. I must say, it is a lovely room, though beige and brown aren’t my colours. I’m right up on the top floor and I can see all the way across to the war memorial.

  But, if the truth be known, since you died I’ve been a bit ambivalent about life anyway. So this morning when I realised I was left with no option but to kill myself, I decided to swallow thallium, but you can’t get it anymore. The chemist didn’t even know what I was talking about when I asked for some. ‘It was popular in the fifties,’ I said, though she didn’t look as if she was born until nineteen eighty so I don’t suppose she would know.

  So then I went to the railway station, but there were too many people waiting on the platform. I decided to throw myself under a tram instead, but the first driver to come along was very young, and I didn’t want him to have me on his mind for the rest of his life because of them, because they’ve betrayed me.

  It all started about five weeks ago. It was my birthday. Our birthday.

  Judith said, ‘We’re having an eightieth birthday party just for you!’

  As you know, it was actually our seventy-ninth birthday, but I just let them be a year early and got on with enjoying my day out. Lovely lunch. I had a prawn cocktail and a slice of cheesecake. The cream wasn’t real, but it was still nice. Mrs Parsons had poached fillet of fish and a slice of lemon tart. She said hers was lovely too, but she couldn’t get her spoon through the pastry so she wrapped it in her serviette and popped it in her handbag for later.

  It was a lovely day, then they dropped me back home and it all went to mud. Judith told me I had to go to a home. I said, ‘I’ve got a home,’ but she meant a home in a retirement village. That’s when I knew I’d have to be careful about you. I didn’t want to be put away just because I talk to you. If Judith heard me, she’d say, ‘She talks to herself, she’s demented.’

  These past weeks have been truly dreadful. As I say, it all started on my birthday, and then they moved Florence in, and, well, it ended last Sunday. It was the last straw, so here I am.

  It’s obvious that, together, the very people who are meant to care about me planned the whole conspiracy. As the saying goes, ‘Crows everywhere are equally black.’

  Why? That’s what I want to know. Why would they do that to me?

  Walter told them to be dressed and ready for the surprise birthday party by eleven. So, on Sunday, Margery inched out of bed especially early to eat her breakfast. After she’d been in to see Mrs Parsons, she showered, ran a wet comb through what was left of her curls, dressed in her best frock, coat and hat – a squat, felt hat she’d bought in 1949 – and was waiting at the gate by ten, peering down Gold Street.

  Eventually, Walter came kicking along the footpath, smiling just for Margery, a sixty-ish ex-boxer, balding yet hirsute, a shiny Elvis curl on his forehead and the remnants of a ducktail carefully constructed at his nape. Because it was his mother’s birthday, he carried his purple suit folded over his arm, and as always, Walter was jaunty, victorious, draped in silk, his opponent prone on the canvas, his boxing gloves bloodied, triumph obliterating the pain in his battered ribs, not a sleek black hair on his head out of place and his entourage behind him. All around, the spectators pulsed, ‘Bull, Bull, Brunswick Bull!’ At the sight of her son, Margery’s stern, slightly bewildered expression warmed.

  ‘Nine hundred and eighty days,’ she said, her distorted image looming back at her from Walter’s chrome lens sunglasses.

  ‘Nine hundred and eighty days without one single drink,’ he said and kissed her on the cheek.

  ‘How are you, Walter dear?’

  ‘Never better.’ He gave her a plastic supermarket bag. ‘You look pretty.’

  Margery blushed, ‘It’s just an old thing,’ and looked into the plastic bag. ‘Oh my! Walter . . . chocolates and flowers!’

  ‘Carnations,’ Walter said, pleased with himself. ‘Happy birthday, Mumsy.’

  Just then, the Boyles arrived. As Barry eased his almost-new, second-hand Mercedes-Benz M-Class four-wheel drive to the kerb, Judith observed her eroded family standing there on the footpath: a plain old woman contracting into her distorted shoes, mauve hair squirting out from under her aged hat, and a punctured and pulverised bloke with black-dyed sideburns and bleach-white footy shorts, which were tight enough to be confronting. Behind them, the family home was crumbling, its once grass-parrot-green paint lying in pale flakes on the ground, the splintered rails of a picket fence rotting on a dry patch of couch grass. ‘Christ, it’s like a scene from an old horror film.’

  ‘You can’t pick your family,’ Barry said, and in the back seat Pudding said, ‘Pity about that.’

  ‘Right, listen,’ Barry said, checking his image in the rear-vision mirror. ‘It’s Marge’s eightieth birthday. It’s in our best interest to keep it nice, no matter what, for the next few hours, alright?’

  ‘You just want her house,’ Pudding said and got out of the car. She strolled across the narrow street to speak to Tyson, who’d known her since the day she was born. These neighbours, Tyson and his housemates, were a bunch of unkempt twenty-somethings, aged teenagers l
ost between genres. As usual, they sat in the wreck of a modified 1998 Holden Commodore. The wheels were missing and the car itself was rusting into the overgrown front lawn beneath the broken front windows of the house, but the leather seats remained and the in-car entertainment system boasted stinger wiring, custom sub-enclosure, clarion head unit, sound processor, tweeters, subwoofers, amplifier and speakers.

  Judith smiled tightly at her mother and puckered to give her a birthday kiss, but Margery said, ‘Hello, Judith. Goodness, you’ve put on weight since Christmas.’

  ‘You’re not much chop yourself, Marge,’ Judith said evenly. ‘You could have at least worn your pearls, that’s what they’re for – to wear.’ Judith had coveted the pearls for thirty years. On the occasion of her twenty-first birthday she assumed her mother had actually gifted her the pearls but was stunned when, at the stroke of midnight, Margery asked for them back.

  Over her mother’s shoulder, Judith spotted the For Sale sign on Mrs Bist’s house. ‘Renovator’s delight. Expect the unexpected in this delightful cottage in a prime location.’

  ‘You didn’t tell me that house was for sale, Barry! Why didn’t you tell me that house was for sale?’

  ‘The sign’s been up since Christmas, Judif,’ Walter said, and Barry raised his hands in surrender. Barry worked in real estate, but his patch was Reservoir, a suburb to the north of Melbourne not yet quite noticed by restorers and opportunists.

  ‘Kevin from over the road wanted to buy it,’ Margery said, ‘but a young couple ended up getting it.’

  ‘That’ll be nice for you, Mumsy,’ Walter said. ‘A nice young couple next door.’

  ‘Renovators.’ Margery sniffed. ‘They take all the parking spots in the street, have a baby – think they’re the first people in the world to have one – then take up all the room on the footpath with those ruddy great prams. You can’t get around them with a shopping cart.’

  ‘Modernise the suburb,’ Barry said, throwing his arms wide. ‘Your house price will skyrocket, Marge, and they’ll plant nice gardens and trees.’

  ‘That’s right,’ Margery declared. ‘They plant trees, the roots ruin the footpaths, block out the views and the birds drop all over the cars, and then they complain.’

  Walter suggested at least yuppies would be a change from Tyson and his mates, but Margery just screwed her nose at the house opposite. ‘Wretched ruddy so-and-sos they are.’

  ‘Progress, Marge. This is where the boom is,’ Barry said, reaching inside his beige leather bomber jacket to take out his BlackBerry. ‘There’s thirty-six renovations in a three-kilometre radius of this street as we speak. A real boom. This one went for six fifty.’

  Judith’s face lit up. ‘Six hundred and fifty thousand dollars, for a smelly little cave like that?’

  Barry ran his finger over his BlackBerry. ‘I’ve been telling you for months, Judith, these little workers’ cottages are going off.’

  ‘My little home can’t be worth much,’ Margery said. ‘Lance’s parents only paid ninety-five pounds for it.’

  ‘Free-standing, single-fronted terraces are very in demand. A boom, right here in this street.’ Barry slapped his brother-in-law on the shoulder. ‘Aged care and real estate, that’s where the future is, eh, Walter?’

  ‘You shouldn’t wear those shorts, Walter,’ Judith said. ‘They’re obscene.’

  ‘Better get changed,’ Walter said, and went inside. Margery leaned on the car. She was longing to sit down, but Judith was poking her mobile phone with her long, filigreed fingernails, and Barry had gone to peer through Mrs Bist’s front window. Soon Walter bounced out onto the street in his purple suit, trying to stretch his jacket over his paunch. His mother beamed at him. ‘I remember when you got that lovely suit, Walter. Lance called you a lair, but you were never a lair. You were a champion.’

  Pud wandered back to the car and Judith snapped her phone shut. ‘Purple matches the colour of your skin tone, Walter.’ His proud smile fell away and he stepped from one foot to the other, rubbing his nose with the palm of his hand.

  Pudding stroked his lapel. ‘I think you look cool, Uncle Walter. Seriously retro.’

  ‘I’m the one here that’s trained in “Colours”,’ Judith said, and it was true, the Certificate Three in Beauty Services class of 1995 did spend one entire lesson on matching colours with skin tone. ‘My gift with style, DeeAndra, is precisely why I am an unqualified success.’

  ‘That’s true,’ Pud said brightly. ‘You are an unqualified success . . . especially with women who want to look like Middle Eastern dictators’ wives.’

  Barry rubbed his hands together. ‘Ready for your big day out, Marge?’

  ‘My word,’ she said, tugging at the doorhandle.

  ‘I’ll get the special guest,’ Walter said.

  Pudding opened the car door, ‘Hop in, Gran.’ Margery started to climb into the car but Judith called, ‘No!’ She retrieved a towel from the back and spread it on the seat for her mother and Mrs Parsons to sit on. Pudding eased Marge into the car, and Walter arrived with Mrs Parsons, a small, nut-coloured old woman clinging to his purple suit, her little brown legs coming out of the bottom of her coat like in a kiddie’s drawing. Walter placed her on the back seat as though she was a new moth and squeezed in beside her. Pudding strapped the two old ladies and her uncle in, made herself comfortable in the dickie seat, and off they went in Barry’s almost-new Mercedes to the Tropic Hotel, an establishment renowned for its succulent tropical decor.

  On the short trip, Mrs Parsons and Margery stared wondrously at the Elms along Royal Parade, the stately terrace houses, the taut joggers and fubsy city workers toiling around Princes Park, and the portentous stone buildings of Melbourne University.

  ‘It’s all changed,’ Mrs Parsons said, and Walter concurred, ‘Fings do change, don’t they?’

  In the city, Margery stared at the shoppers and bankers, shop assistants and office workers, the milling students and the tourists. ‘These days it’s like we’re in another country,’ she sniffed, and Pudding rolled her eyes. ‘They’re just people, Gran, like you and me.’

  In the underground car park Barry waited patiently while Walter helped the aged birthday girl and her decrepit friend from the car. Pudding walked her grandmother and, behind them, Walter came slowly with Mrs Parsons curled at his elbow. Judith, feeling pleased and important to be going out to a posh hotel with her husband, caught Barry’s arm as he rushed purposefully towards to the lift. ‘It’s like taking a couple of raisins out, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘You’re right about the old people’s home,’ she said, struggling to keep up in her new high heels. ‘I mean, if Mrs Bist’s house got six hundred grand . . . and Pud will be at uni next year, and I’ll have expanded into counselling . . . Well, it is a good time for you to go into a business.’

  ‘Yeah,’ he said and removed her hand from his arm. He hurried to press the lift button.

  ‘There’s never going to be a shortage of old people, is there?’ she called.

  He missed the lift, so again, Barry had to wait. The old ladies faltered at the small gap between the floor and the lift, but stepped gamely over it and moved to the back, clinging to the handrail, and were soundlessly transported to the foyer. By the time the lift stopped, Barry had managed to distance himself from his wife again. Stepping into the foyer, he glanced around and made a beeline for the restaurant, but he was spotted by a concerned young man with an indoor complexion. ‘Mr Boyle! Were we expecting you? I’m sorry –’

  ‘No, mate,’ Barry said, cutting him off. ‘The in-laws.’ He jerked his head and the concierge turned to see a large, heavily made-up woman with big hair lumbering towards him in a diamanté-studded, knee-length kite dress. ‘Mrs Boyle?’ he said, astonished, but Judith had stopped to squint up into the atrium. Creeping across the foyer behind her w
as a withered little Islander woman and a sunken old lady wearing glasses that didn’t sit well on her old face. Both ladies carried at least two handbags each and were dressed for winter. With them was a dilapidated, oversized bodgie in an undersized purple suit and a strapping, stylish young woman typing on a mobile phone as she walked.

  ‘Got a booking,’ Barry said. It took a moment, but the concierge’s arm shot up, his fingers clicked and a waiter arrived and led the group to a table in a corner behind an imitation rubber plant. The Blandons sat, looking up at the plastic potted palm fronds peeping from all forty-three balconies, and the indoor rainforest bathed in sky-lit air, colourful plastic parrots dotting its branches. In keeping with the ambiance, the furniture was cane and the carpet a busy pattern of hibiscus and lyrebirds.

  ‘It’s real nice here, Barry,’ Judith said, taking a bottle of sparkling wine from her bag. She ripped the cork out effortlessly and filled her water tumbler, and as she drank Pudding took the bottle from her and poured some for Margery and Mrs Parsons. When a waiter arrived with a scotch and Coke for Barry, Judith asked for an ice bucket and ‘a list of the sorts of champagnes you’ve got’, and Pudding asked for a vodka and red cordial. Walter wiped his sweaty brow with his table napkin and told the waiter he’d happily kill anyone for a beer but the doctor would kill him, so he’d better have dry ginger ale, ‘in a seven-ounce beer glass, if you don’t mind, thanks, bud’.

  Barry’s mobile phone rang, and Pudding reached across and snatched it from the table before her father could. ‘Hello?’ Then she smirked at her father and said, ‘Wow, Dad, what a surprise, it’s your secretary . . . again!’

  Judith poured herself more sparkling wine and Barry grabbed the phone, walking away with it. ‘Yes, Charmaine, what’s the problem?’

  Pudding looked around the hotel and said, ‘This is very special for you, isn’t it, Gran?’

  ‘Very special,’ Margery replied, and everyone smiled and raised their glasses, but before they could say ‘happy birthday’ Margery added, ‘Though armrests on dining table chairs are uncalled for.’