There Should Be More Dancing

by Rosalie Ham

  Judith pointed out to everyone that the Tropic was a skyscraper hotel, ‘It’s got an opening that goes all the way up to the sky, see? And there’s an indoor forest and waterfall right there in the foyer.’

  ‘It’s called a water feature,’ Pudding corrected. ‘Let’s go for a ride to the top, Gran.’ Margery hesitated, but Mrs Parsons moved about between the armrests, so Walter pulled her chair out and Margery gathered her courage and followed. ‘Coming?’ Pudding called back, but Walter was staring at the waitress at the next table and Barry was still talking to Charmaine.

  When Judith stepped into the lift, Margery patted Mrs Parsons’ arm reassuringly. ‘It’s quite safe. The sign there says it can take five hundred kilograms.’

  At the top a man’s voice said, ‘Level forty-three,’ and Mrs Parsons asked, ‘How does he know?’

  ‘It’s pre-recorded,’ Pudding said. Margery and Mrs Parsons nodded, though they were no wiser.

  Judith and Pudding went to the high balustrade and looked down to the carpet forty-three floors below. Margery stayed by the lift. There were no chairs to sit on, so she perched on the edge of the potted palm and watched a family try to get into their room. A girl, aged about ten, swiped the key card and opened the door for her mother, while her brother and father struggled with their luggage. Mrs Parsons wasn’t tall enough to see over the balustrade, so she came back and stood next to Margery. ‘I went in an aeroplane once.’

  ‘What does it look like from up there?’ Margery asked.

  ‘I had the aisle seat.’

  After a short time they descended in the lift, Mrs Parsons grabbing her beret, and made their way across the foyer, satisfied that they’d been all the way to the top. As they settled again at the table, Barry said, ‘Top suicide spot, this place. Take it from me, it can kill a lovely meal when someone lands.’

  Pudding looked at the busy carpet and said, ‘The floor’s the right colour.’

  Barry explained that all the chairs had been removed from the balconies so people couldn’t use them to climb onto the balustrade to jump off.

  ‘Occupational health and safety,’ Walter said importantly. ‘We keep the balcony door locked at the hostel too.’

  ‘That’s because all the residents are drunks,’ Judith said, pouring the last of the champagne into her water tumbler.

  Walter ignored her. ‘We’re converting the lodging house into a hostel for international travellers.’

  ‘You mean backpackers,’ Pud said.

  Walter lifted his chin and jerked his head to loosen his neck. ‘Job’ll be right.’

  The waiter appeared again and asked if they were ready to order. Judith asked for another bottle of champagne and the others turned their attention to the menu.

  Things were still relatively pleasant, even after the dessert dishes were cleared. Barry toyed with his nine-carat rolled gold cufflinks – the right cuff read ‘Sell’ and the left ‘Buy’ – and talked at length about some of the houses he’d sold, how he was set to make a fortune when the Brunswick boom reached Reservoir. Walter related to them again, blow by blow, how he’d won the 1983 middleweight championship fight against Archie the Annihilator. Pudding drank three vodka and red cordials, and on her way back from the ladies’ missed a step, fell into a potted palm but was righted again by Justin, the maître d’, before anyone noticed. Judith placed her palm on Mrs Parsons’ red beret and watched it disappear into her fuzzy Islander hair, explaining loudly and in great detail the process required to straighten it. Margery dropped a prawn and wasn’t able to retrieve it from the colourful fern fronds in the carpet. When she tapped the side of her glass with her bread knife to say a few words the waiter started tidying dishes. ‘Anyone require anything more?’ He leaned down to take Judith’s plate. ‘Coffee, perhaps, Mrs Boyle?’

  Judith said she’d ‘loveanothabottleashampers, thanks,’ and Barry said, ‘Just the bill, mate.’

  When it came Barry told Walter he could pay for his mother and Mrs Parsons, but Walter had only brought twenty dollars so Mrs Parsons gave him a five-dollar note and Margery paid the balance. They were standing to leave, Mrs Parsons turning from side to side between the armrests, when Walter said, ‘The watch, Judif.’

  ‘Oh, yes!’ Pudding pulled back her mother’s sleeve and there, pressing into the flesh of her wrist, was Margery’s watch: delicate, pink-gold and ancient. Pudding unlatched it and Judith said, ‘You’ll love this, Marge. I got it fixed.’

  ‘I paid half,’ Walter added.

  Margery took the watch gently in her soft fingers and was taken back to the dim, rarely used front parlour in her childhood home – and Cecily. They sat side by side on the couch, wearing their Sunday-best dresses, bows in their hair. Their mother was there, proud and pleased, their brothers and sisters squirming with suppressed excitement, and their father came slowly into the room in his dark, immaculate railway station uniform and stood ceremoniously in front of them. Margery thought she saw tears in his eyes. ‘You’re thirteen now,’ he said, and their mother dabbed her tears with a hanky. ‘Teenagers!’ he said, and from behind his back brought two flat, satin-covered boxes and held them out to the girls. Cecily wrenched the box from its pretty wrapping immediately, while Margery untied the ribbon and rolled it neatly around her fingers. Then she carefully peeled away the wrapping paper and folded it, smoothing it to an even square. Cecily snapped the clasp closed on her wrist – ‘It’s three o’clock!’ – just as Margery opened her box.

  ‘We got a watch each,’ Margery said. ‘Exactly the same.’ She showed the watch to Mrs Parsons.

  ‘Marge had a twin sister,’ Judith said. ‘Did I tell you that, DeeAndra?’

  ‘About fifty times.’

  ‘She died,’ Judith said, and drained the last of her champagne.

  ‘Hold it up to your ear,’ Walter said, so Margery held it up to her ear.

  ‘Oh my, it’s ticking! Thank you, Walter.’ She slid it onto her wrist.

  Judith said, ‘I took it all the way to the city, Marge, especially. To a specialist old-time jeweller Barry knows.’

  Margery was trying to fasten the latch on the wristband, but her fingers were no longer agile. She said, ‘I’ll have to get a new band.’

  ‘Tell us the time, Marge,’ Judith said, but Margery couldn’t see the hands, so Judith reached over and took the watch from her mother. ‘Well, that was a waste of my well-earned time and money.’ She dropped it into her handbag. ‘Let’s go.’

  ‘That’s Mumsy’s watch, Judif,’ Walter protested, but his mother waved his concern away, pressed her hat into place, gathered up her handbag and turned to the waiter.

  ‘Thank you, son’ she said. ‘It was good of you to try and make it special.’

  Behind her, Judith protested, ‘I organised it,’ and Walter added, ‘It was my idea.’

  It all went completely to mud when they dropped Margery back at home. As they pulled up outside 253 Gold Street, Mrs Parsons was already trying to locate the doorhandle. ‘Thank you for a lovely outing, you’re very kind, now I really must say goodbye.’

  ‘The party’s not over yet,’ Walter said. He opened the door for her and lifted her out of the car, placing her gently on the road. ‘Come in for a cuppa.’

  ‘I really should get home,’ she said, but it was no use. Although her little brown legs reached towards her house, Walter steered her straight through Margery’s gateway and into the house. He eased her coat from her small bony shoulders, folded it neatly over the arm of the couch and settled her in Lance’s old chair next to Margery. Pudding put the kettle on. Then Walter got Margery’s slippers and, just as Judith came in from the lavatory, turned the ceiling fan on. Four blades of fluff, dust and crusty flies dislodged and landed on her special hair. Barry laughed, and that’s when Judith said – shouted, actually, though Margery wasn’t deaf – ‘You should be
in a nice air-conditioned home, Marge.’

  Barry told her to pipe down.

  ‘No, Barry. You’re right. She should be in a retirement home.’

  Mrs Parsons tried to nudge herself forwards in her chair.

  Barry glared at his wife. ‘You could have waited until after her birthday.’

  Mrs Parsons raised her creaky little arm for Walter to help her get up. ‘I really should get going,’ but Walter was busy stepping from one foot to the other, rubbing his nose with his palm.

  Judith kept on, ‘You have to admit, she hasn’t got as much dexteritiveness these days, have you, Marge?’

  Margery said, ‘I dropped the prawn because the chairs were too far from the table,’ but Judith just said, ‘I’m talking about the fall you had,’ and lifted up Margery’s foot by the toe of her slipper. She pointed to the gauze held to her cigarette-paper-thin skin with blue bandaids.

  Walter stopped stepping from foot to foot. ‘Have a little fall, did you, Mumsy?’

  ‘I tripped,’ Margery said desperately. ‘It’s the footpath.’

  It had happened the day before as she made her way back from doing up Mrs Parsons’ shoelaces. She stopped to check the letterbox – sometimes there was a card from Morris – and as she moved away, sorting through the specials brochures and advertising material, the toe of her slipper caught the edge of the footpath and down she went. The sky circled and the footpath came up, and she grabbed the bin as she passed on her way down. There was a terrible crunch and Margery said, ‘Oh dear,’ but it was just the geranium bush. At the time, the young couple who’d purchased Mrs Bist’s place, Tony and Miriana, were in their front yard talking about windows, but they didn’t notice her. It was Tyson who saw her marbled, bleeding shin sticking out from under the bin. He nudged it with the toe of his boot and, while he dialled his mother on his mobile phone, failed to notice Margery had raised her hand.

  ‘Guess what? Another crustacean’s carked it. The sack of bones from 253’s in the flower bush.’

  ‘You were nice when you were a little boy,’ Margery said, which wasn’t strictly true. He wandered away and soon his mother, Bonita, came jogging down the street in her dressing gown, a towel around her shoulders and her hair plastered with a muddy mix of charcoal-brown permanent hair dye. She knelt beside Margery. ‘Did you break anything, Mrs B?’

  ‘The geraniums,’ Margery said, thinking the dye in Bonita’s hair was too dark for someone her age.

  Bonita reached for her phone. ‘What’s Judith’s number?’

  ‘There’s no need to phone her,’ Margery said, scrambling onto her hands and knees with an agility she didn’t know she had.

  Bonita helped her up. ‘You’re lucky, Mrs Blandon. If you’d fallen in the backyard you could have ended up like Mrs Bist.’

  ‘Never. Mrs Parsons would have known something was up when I didn’t show up to untie her laces.’

  Bonita helped her inside. She put the kettle on, stuck an adhesive bandaid to the fragile skin on Margery’s torn shin and left, saying, ‘Give us a hoy if you need anything urgent, eh, Mrs B?’

  And now Judith was using the fall as a weapon. She put her hands on her hips, pulling the fabric of her kite dress against her tummy apron. ‘We know what it means for old people when they start to fall, don’t we? And, may I remind you all, she has to use a commode at night.’

  ‘She’s always had a pot,’ Walter said. ‘They all had them as kids. It’s normal.’

  ‘No, it’s not!’ Pud called from the kitchen, and Barry said knowledgably, ‘It’s like an en suite, eh, Wally, only old-fashioned?’

  ‘I’ve still got most of my own teeth,’ Margery said proudly, but no one heard.

  ‘It’s her feet. She should be wearing her new slippers,’ said Walter.

  Margery looked to Mrs Parsons for support, but Mrs Parsons, her fingers curled around the end of the armrests, was trying to lever herself out of the chair. Lance had sat in that chair for over fifty years, and his father before him, so the springs and horsehair rested on the linoleum, and Mrs Parsons had no chance of raising her small bottom from the cavity.

  ‘She has to go to a home sooner or later,’ Judith said, but Margery objected, ‘I can’t go to a home. Who’ll do Mrs Parsons’ laces?’

  ‘Slip-ons,’ Barry said, and Mrs Parsons closed her eyes, pursed her lips and pulled hard on the armrests.

  Walter, stepping from foot to foot, said, ‘You don’t have to go, Mumsy. You don’t have to go,’ and Barry said, ‘Judith, why don’t we wait until after we’ve had the dinner with our new partners?’ and Pudding said, ‘You’re not partners yet!’ and placed two mugs of weak, milky tea on the small table between Margery and Mrs Parsons. Margery looked sideways at the tea-leaves floating on the top.

  Judith counted off Margery’s ailments on her fingers: ‘She’s infirm, she’s not as dexterous as she used to be, she’s got bad feet and a bad heart – she’s a cripple. She can’t even change her sheets anymore.’

  Margery said, ‘Cheryl changes my sheets.’

  ‘See? She needs a home helper and she’s forgotten! Cheryl’s gone, remember?’

  ‘There’s a new home help coming Tuesday,’ Margery said.

  ‘Everyone knows home helpers steal all your antique jewellery – pinch the wedding ring right off your finger and sell it at Cash Converters – but there’s no need to worry about your pearls, is there, Marge? Got them well and truly hidden, eh, Marge?’

  Margery looked at her ring finger, the flesh narrow where the thin gold band had rubbed for almost sixty years. ‘I’m not sure where my wedding ring is,’ she said absently.

  Judith said, ‘See? Forgetful.’

  ‘But I don’t see why I have to leave my home,’ Margery declared.

  Walter turned sideways, his right punching hand raised to his chin, and said to his imaginary opponent, ‘On Tuesday she’s getting a new home help.’

  Judith nodded emphatically. ‘My point is proven. She needs help, her memory’s gone and her bad heart complicates her diminished mobility, and because of that she’ll end up like Mrs Bist!’

  ‘I’m just a bit stiff in the mornings!’

  Judith shouted, ‘That’s what I mean, Marge. Diminished mobility!’ And that’s when Margery said quietly, ‘I can still get out of a chair.’

  Mrs Parsons froze between the armrests. Walter stopped rocking. Everyone looked at Judith. She flushed deep red from her diamanté-trimmed décolletage to her cheeks.

  ‘That’s not fair, Marge.’

  Pudding said, ‘What does Gran mean about the chair, Mum?’

  Margery examined a cross-stitch flower on the corner of her hanky, and Mrs Parsons put her arm up again. Barry pointed at the ceiling and said, ‘Pressed tin. Good selling point.’

  Walter started rocking, again, raised his fists and dodged an invisible left jab. ‘This was s’posed to be a party, for Mumsy.’

  Pudding asked again, ‘What chair is Gran talking about?’ but Judith just clutched her sparkling bodice and wilted, as if her mother had stabbed her.

  Barry looked at his watch. ‘It’s time we were long gone.’

  Pudding persisted, ‘What is it about a chair that’s upsetting you, Sajida?’

  ‘Stop calling me that!’

  ‘Well, stop dressing like Saddam Hussein’s wife!’

  ‘We’ll go now,’ Judith said, ‘Come on, Wally, we’ll give you a lift.’ Her voice caught in her throat.

  Walter said he wasn’t ready to go yet, so Judith pleaded, ‘We’ll give you a lift,’ and nudged Barry, who said with feigned nonchalance, ‘Sure. No trouble to drive all the way to Collingwood for you, Wally.’

  Walter stopped dead. He lowered his fists and wound his head to loosen his neck. He stepped close to Barry, put his face close. ‘Job’s right.�
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  Barry raised his hands in surrender, and Pudding prodded her mother – ‘Tell us about the chair?’ – but Judith just played with her mother’s watch on her wrist.

  Mrs Parsons said, ‘I really should get going.’

  Finally, Barry looked down at her, smiled gallantly, ‘We should all get going,’ and offered her his arm. He prised her out of the sunken chair, then Walter helped her on with her coat and walked her down the side of the house to her back door. Mrs Ahmed, who lived on the other side of Mrs Parsons, stopped picking plums and turned, smiling at them from the tree, her brown face bordered by her bright headscarf, while Pudding’s voice carried across the small, concrete and corrugated iron yards: ‘You started the story about the chair, Gran, now you should finish it.’

  When he got back, Walter found Margery calmly cross-stitching while Judith ransacked the house. Pudding followed her mother, badgering as she searched for Margery’s pearls, shaking boxes and cartons in the pantry, opening all the frozen vegetable packages in the freezer.

  ‘It’s about time you gave up, Judif. You’ll get the pearls when Mumsy’s ready, you know that,’ but Judith up-ended the peg basket into the old copper then moved to the bathroom, where she opened old denture containers and drained every bottle from the cabinet into the bath – bleach, moisturiser, disinfectant – then went through the first-aid tin before tapping the walls in search of secret compartments.

  Barry was pacing around the clothesline, talking on his BlackBerry. Walter paced the lounge room, counting back from ten over and over in his mind, clenching and unclenching his fists, ‘Calm like a canvas, Walter, calm like an empty venue.’ He stopped, pressed his arms to his sides and said, ‘The pearls belong to Mumsy.’

  Next door, Mrs Parsons sat on her bed in the front room, her hands over her ears, the sound of Judith bawling on and on – ‘Infirm. She’s infirm!’ – and Pudding screeching –‘The chair? Tell me!’ – warbling over the back fences. Finally, the Boyles left. She watched them pile into their car, Barry saying, ‘Six hundred and fifty thousand dollars. I told you, Judith, there’s money in these little workers’ cottages,’ but even Mrs Parsons knew six hundred thousand dollars was far too much to pay for a detached, two-bedroom weatherboard cottage with kitchen and bathroom tacked onto the back and outside lavatories, even if they were situated close to the park.