There Should Be More Dancing

by Rosalie Ham

  ‘He can move in,’ Barry said, his hand on his heart. ‘Like I said, his future’s secure.’

  Walter stopped circling the clothesline. ‘I’d like to remind everyone that a third of this house belongs to Morris.’

  It was at this point that Judith said, ‘I’m not giving anything to that criminal.’

  Well, as Lance would have said, you could have heard a fly fart.

  ‘Criminal?’ Margery said.

  Pudding’s eyes stayed on her uncle but she placed her hand on her grandmother’s arm. ‘It’ll be okay, Gran.’

  Next door, Mrs Parsons noted the sudden silence, so she scurried inside, locking the door behind her.

  Walter bounced, winding his head, his fists up, springing sideways around the clothesline and up the back steps, jabbing at the air. Barry grabbed the laundry stick. Judith shot into the bathroom. She tried to close the door, but it wouldn’t move over the warped floor, so she scurried back into the kitchen and grabbed a table knife, pointed it at Walter, but he held her against the rattling kitchen bureau with his glazed gaze, his fists wheeling.

  ‘I paid a lot of money for Judith’s nose. Break it and I’ll sue.’

  Walter said he’d be happy to rearrange her whole face for free, ‘Anytime you like, Bald Barry.’

  Judith said, ‘You should go back to that loony bin, Wally,’ and he swung at his sister, a reaching right hook, the breeze from Walter’s arm lifting Barry’s comb-over. The dishes in the bureau clanked as he jabbed, back and forth. Judith cowered sideways. ‘Stop it, Wally, you’re scaring me,’ but Walter sparred, pushing her along the wall to the corner, sweat on his brow, feeling the heat from the glaring spotlights, the smoke-filled air and the pulsing crowd: ‘Bull, Bull, Brunswick Bull.’

  He took another swing. It missed.

  Barry moved back to the doorway, ready to bolt. ‘You just had to say it, didn’t you, Judith? You just had to open your big, fat mouth.’

  Judith forgot she was pinned against the wall by a middleweight champion and leaned forward. ‘Don’t call me fat, Barry. I’ve lost three kilos this week,’ and Pud added, ‘Dad’s lost five.’

  Walter’s fist flicked, quick as a lizard’s tongue, and hit the wall right where Judith’s face had been a quarter of a second before, and Judith’s knees went. She slid down just as Walter’s right arm jabbed up, his fists swish-swished. Pudding cried, ‘You’re a winner, Uncle Walter,’ and he stopped dancing, his arms shot straight up, almost to the ceiling, and he bounced again, danced around the little kitchen, the floor springing like a canvas, the plates clapping, the crowd roaring – ‘Bull, Bull, Brunswick Bull’ – and the imaginary referee counting over Judith, a defeated puddle on the floor.

  He sat back down in his seat; the glaze started to leave his eyes and he smoothed his Elvis forelock. Margery said, ‘There’s steamed caramel pudding for dessert, Walter dear,’ and he said, ‘You got ice-cream to go with that, Mumsy?’

  ‘I have.’

  Judith said, ‘You should be locked up, like Morris.’

  Walter just lifted up his spoon and stared at the place on the table where his bowl of pudding was going to be.

  The sun is setting, and all the city lights are coming on. It’s very pretty, but boring. You can’t hear anything, can’t see people walking past, and it’s not as if you can just stroll outside to the letterbox for some fresh air, or walk straight out the front door to the corner shop, not that I can walk far these days what with my shin the way it is. The wound on my leg started getting worse about the time Judith made her plans about the nursing home clear. Anita did her best, I must say. At the time I thought she tried so hard because it made her feel important, but it wasn’t that at all. It’s obvious to me now that she didn’t want me to go into care because if she did she’d have no one to look out for the floozy, her so-called mother, but I’ll get to that. Anyrate, Anita started dropping in any old time, just breezing down the hall, her excuse being she needed to do my dressing. She never bothered knocking.

  ‘How are ya, Mrs Blandon?’

  ‘It’s only Monday,’ I said. ‘And you should knock.’

  She just said, ‘I should,’ and dumped her square, green plastic basket with all her potions and spells on my table. ‘You could snib your door.’

  Then she saw my shin and said, ‘Shit.’ I calmly explained that the dressing had come off in the shower, but all she said was, ‘Mrs Blandon, those dressings stick like shit to a blanket,’ so at this point I felt I had to say something.

  ‘I do not appreciate your language.’

  She was picking off the tissues. ‘Is that Mercurochrome on that wound?’

  When I said yes she found the bottle and chucked it in the bin. It still had some in it.

  I said, ‘You’re not supposed to do dressings.’

  ‘I’m not supposed to keep secrets about clients who have falls either. It could get me into real trouble, Mrs Blandon, and trouble is the very last thing I need. This wound could ulcerate. You have to be very careful with it.’

  ‘I am very careful with it,’ I said. Well, I could hardly tell her my daughter ripped it off, could I? Looking back, I should have.

  She went ahead and redid the dressing. I had to put aside my cross-stitch; I had started on a big, yellow excavator I’d designed at the time – I did double-thread, double-herringbone stitch for the tyres because they were black. They needed texture. I abandoned it in the end because I actually do prefer working on the proverbs. That day – somewhat prophetically, I see now – I was in the mood for Deceit always returns to its master. Anyrate, it took her a long time to do my dressing because the bandaids had to be coaxed off without tearing my skin off. Then she checked my dosette, but she found everything in order because I drop the sleeping tablets down the sink. So she did the dishes on the sink, even though I’d already rinsed them and left them to drain. That became a habit of hers, actually, re-washing all my dishes, but it wasn’t nearly as annoying as the new shower curtain she put up. Awful colour, but I offered to pay for it regardless. ‘Nar,’ she said. ‘I’ll take it out of your hide.’

  It’s still there, that curtain. Florence likes it, but she would.

  Then she stripped my bed and put the washing on, did the bathroom and swept and mopped. While the hall and lounge room floors dried she made a pot of tea and sat on the back stoop, ripped off her Nicorette patch, smoked a cigarette and told me I’d ‘lose a bit of sky once that renovation goes up next door’.

  ‘There’s enough sky for everyone, though these days people don’t take the time to look at the sky.’

  ‘Too busy trying not to step in dog shit.’

  ‘I’ll remind you again that I don’t appreciate your bad language.’

  ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I forget my manners.’

  I made no comment, though it was obvious she has never been taught manners. For a minute or two we drank our tea, then I told her that our honourable ex-Prime Minister, Mr John Howard, wasn’t hung properly.

  ‘Well,’ she said, ‘he should be.’

  I reminded her again that he’d held the title of leader of a country for a very long time, and she said, ‘So has Robert Mugabe,’ but I said I didn’t want a picture of him on my wall.

  She’d finished her cigarette by now and was looking into a little mirror and pulling the hairs out of her chin with tweezers, so she asked me how my weekend was.

  ‘I had the family over on Sunday.’

  ‘How did it go?’

  ‘We had a nice family day.’ That wasn’t exactly a fib because I’m sure we must have had nice, friendly family days in the past.

  ‘Walter and Judith came, did they?’

  ‘And Mrs Parsons.’

  Whenever Anita came she popped in to see Mrs Parsons for a minute. Mrs Parsons avoided the council home help list,
but she would have had to go on it as soon as she’d had a fall. Poor Mrs Parsons never got the chance to fall, of course.

  We used to have lovely Sunday lunches, me and Mrs Parsons and Walter, but everything was starting to fester. We’ve had squabbles in the past. Judith’s not normally a big drinker, but she tends to drink to excess at Christmas and birthdays. And last Christmas Walter got upset because Judith gave me a blow-up neck rest with Virgin Air written on it for a present. She gave me a bunch of cocktail stirrers the Christmas before, but Pud always gives me something nice . . . body wash or bath salts. But I felt in my heart that Walter wouldn’t actually punch Judith. Barking dogs seldom bite.

  I don’t think that operation made Judith look better anyway; it just made her look like someone put the heel of their hand on her face and pushed. I said at the time she told me she was getting it done, ‘Your nose is the least of your problems.’ And when she said Morris was a criminal I assumed she was talking about the business he started at school selling cigarettes. I’d heard nothing about jail, let alone hanging, until Walter explained it all to me. It still kept me awake most of that Sunday night, my shin stinging and my mind in turmoil, trying to sort things out. How anyone could plant drugs in someone else’s suitcase and watch them cop the consequences is beyond me. What type of person would do such a thing? They could have hung him.

  I realise now what all those blazing rows with Pat were about. We had several arguments about hanging criminals, and of course Pat knew all along about Morris.

  ~

  That argument started way back in the sixties when Ronald Ryan escaped from Pentridge Jail and shot a policeman. At the time I was afraid he’d come to our house, but Lance said if he saw Ronald Ryan he’d invite him in for a beer and ask him what really happened, ‘establish the real truth’.

  ‘He’s a murdering criminal,’ I said. ‘Hanging him is the correct thing to do!’

  Then Pat weighed in, saying that capital punishment was wrong, and so we had lots of arguments about it. In fact, as I sit here, I now see just how significant this is! In 1986 we had another big row about the death penalty. It was the year Lance died. Remember I said Morris had the fight with Walter at Lance’s funeral and took off to Thailand? Well, that very same year, two Australian chaps, a Mr Barlow and Mr Chambers if my memory serves me right, were hung for drug trafficking in Asia. I remember there was a lot of fuss over those hangings; they were in all the papers and on the telly. Anyrate, when I saw it on the news I went up and sat on my bed and waited, and sure enough, Pat comes storming across the road. I can still see her in my mind’s eye. We had a ding-dong row that time. I said drug traffickers were bad eggs, and she said I couldn’t possibly know that for certain, and I said they broke the laws and customs of the country.

  She stood in my kitchen, so bothered she was red with the veins in her poor old weathered neck standing out. Her scalp must have been very hot and itchy under that wig. Anyrate, she yelled, ‘Killing is wrong, full stop, in any country. Legal murder does not achieve anything.’

  I insisted that Ronald Ryan, Barlow and Chambers were criminals, that they had done the wrong thing. ‘Let the punishment be equal with the offence,’ I said.

  I’ll never forget the look of triumph on her face when she said, ‘That’s right, Margery Blandon. “Whoever sheds man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for in the image of God made he man.” Genesis, chapter nine, verse six. But, since you believe killing is a fitting thing, since you agree that the death penalty is right, you should therefore be prepared to hang my Kevin, or let me hang Morris, or Walter.’

  Well, I’ll admit now, she had me stumped at the time. All I could think to say, was, ‘But my sons would never do anything wrong.’

  ‘You don’t know, Margery.’ I can still see her orange fingernail in my face. ‘You just don’t know,’ she said. ‘It’s the principle of the matter!’

  ‘Well,’ I said, ‘if it’s about principle then I could easily say that by letting those criminals stay alive you’re condoning drug trafficking.’

  She turned purple with rage then and shouted, ‘I did not say they shouldn’t be punished!’

  Anyrate, at the time I could actually see her point, but I stuck to my guns because that’s what you do, you stick to your principles. Given hindsight, well, you’d have to say she was right.

  I suppose I’d have to say now, perhaps, that it depends on the circumstances, because I realise that, at the time, Morris was in jail in Thailand, and some overseas countries still have the death penalty.

  It’s dreadful to think that my son endured jail for years in Thailand because of something he didn’t do. Some people just see no wrong in ruining other people’s lives.

  I said to Walter when he explained it all, I said, ‘At least he was warm, the climate’s good over there. I know that because I’ve seen Thailand on the telly.’

  Walter said, ‘He wears shorts all day and the food is very cheap. Lots of vegies.’

  That’s something anyway. It’s not right to let people go cold or hungry.

  ‘Have a nip of cooking sherry,’ Walter said, but it didn’t help.

  To think Pat knew about Morris all along.

  If she knew, then everybody knew.

  Of course, I see now that Pat was right about a few things, but I also see that she never told me things I should have known. Not one thing.

  That Sunday when I found out Morris went to jail was a dreadful Sunday, worse than any Christmas squabble we’ve ever had, and it turned out to be the start of another shocking week. Just shocking. And things got worse as the weeks went by. For one thing, that Sunday turned out to be Mrs Parsons’ last Sunday lunch.

  I can hardly speak about it, just remembering what it was like sitting there waiting, then hoping her blind would go up.

  On Tuesday Margery’s shin felt less tight and looked a little less red, which made her feel generally better, so she settled down to a spot of polishing. She screwed the lid firmly on the bottle of Silvo and positioned Walter’s championship silver trophies in the crystal cabinet, then she aligned the little cardboard squares – the year and the title written in her best hand – in front of each trophy, and then she heard shouting next door. The builders stopped nailing and stood on the roof trusses of the second storey to watch Tony argue with the architect. The architect stormed off, Tony followed, and so did Miriana, so Margery went to her bedroom, smiling at her polished doorknobs as she passed. In the front street, the architect spread his drawings on the roof of Tony’s low red car, and that’s when the shouting really started. Tony scraped the sheet of paper onto the ground. ‘Get your fucking bullshit off my Ferrari!’ The shouting intensified. It sounded to Margery as if the architect objected to a fence, so she went out to check the letterbox. The red stilettos were still there, and there was a pamphlet from the local pizza place and another advertising nasal spray for stronger, longer erections.

  Tony was poking his finger at the architect, ‘Youse don’t know what you’re talking about. I know people who could disarm that alarm in five seconds, mate. The security bars are staying – to hell with your schematic fucking minimal fucking horizontal lines.’

  As he yelled yet another truck arrived and stood idling while the builders unloaded the wrought-iron gates and spiked lacework fence. Margery watched the heartbroken architect roll up his plans and went back inside, taking the red shoes with her. She tried to get her feet into them once more but finally put them in the wardrobe in the second bedroom.

  That afternoon, when Margery did Mrs Parsons’ laces, she said again, ‘I’m sorry my children were such a bother on Sunday,’ and Mrs Parsons repeated what she’d said on Monday morning and afternoon, and again that morning – ‘All children are a blessing’ – though Margery decided Mrs Parsons only said that because she’d endured the pain of having none of her own. She spent the rest of the day w
ave-stitching the trim on Anita’s basket cover.

  On Wednesday Margery settled down to her tea and toast, then Judith’s little van pulled up out the front. The special was Airbrush Nail Art – ten fingers or toes for the price of five.

  Margery’s stomach lurched, but Judith just hurried down the passage, calling, ‘I’m not staying,’ dumped a bag from Spotlight on the couch and kept on towards the lavatory. ‘I’m on new tablets, Marge, so I might call in from time to time to use your toilet.’

  Margery was pouring a cup of tea when she came back in. ‘Would you like a cuppa, Judith?’

  Judith squinted at the tiny hands on her mother’s tiny, antique watch and sat down at the table. ‘That’d be lovely. Black, no milk.’

  ‘You should drink milk for the calcium.’

  ‘How are you keeping, Marge?’

  ‘Good thanks, get yourself a cup then.’ Margery eased her frail body, still tender from the fall two weeks ago, down onto a chair while Judith heaved herself up to get a cup. As she poured, Margery spread jam evenly on her toast. ‘Would you like a slice?’

  ‘Can’t,’ Judith said. ‘Diet.’

  They sipped their tea.

  ‘I’ve lost eight kilos.’

  ‘That may be so, but no amount of foundation make-up will hide the rash that’s creeping up your face from your throat.’

  ‘As ever, thanks for the nurturing, caring support, mother dear,’ said Judith. She had a few sips of tea then got up and moved through the kitchen, lounge room and hall, kicking all the floor mats into a lump by the front door. She came back scattering new mats from the Spotlight bag throughout the house. ‘They’re rubber-backed,’ she said and held one in front of her mother. ‘See? They won’t slip.’ They were bath mats – olive green, with looped pile.

  Margery said, ‘Thank you, Judith.’

  ‘You owe me twenty-five dollars.’

  It was when Margery was counting out the sum in five-dollar bills that Judith spotted the dosette in her mother’s bag. ‘You’re sick, aren’t you?’