‘Would you like some ice-cream?’
‘Too cold,’ said Serena. ‘Isn’t it?’
The sky outside was black, that time of year when darkness began to rule and daylight in the evening faded into a memory. The days had been grey and cold, limiting the mean allowance of light to a few hours of indifferent illumination per diem. Would Mrs Burley still be here in the spring? Janice dreaded winter. The house had begun to unnerve her after dark: she had dreams about it. She looked with longing at the outline of her red car, blurred by the wavy lines of the glass on the kitchen door. Should have put it away in the dilapidated garage round the back, where the sight of it would not fill Serena with envy. She patted her pocket for the keys, which the old dear kept trying to pinch; still wanted to drive, poor old duck. Janice did four until eight, Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, and it was almost time to go, but Mrs Burley always began to talk when they were both on the downward run, and then she did not quite have the heart. Tonight she was going to be bold, strike for freedom ten minutes early. There was something oppressive, intense and mischievous about her charge this evening, and her own movements around the sink became brisk.
‘I’ve got one son and one daughter,’ Serena began, ‘and they don’t love me any more because of the words.’
‘Never, Mrs B.,’ said Janice, making her chatter into a parody of cleaning-lady talk because Mrs Burley liked it that way. ‘They love you a lot, but they got to work, you know. And they live a long way away.’
Janice did not believe that sons and daughters owed it to their elders to interrupt their lives and turn themselves to the ignominy of the kind of service that was her livelihood. Only those who did not know what it was like would ever expect that, and she would have killed herself rather than have her children do for her what she did. They could do it for someone else, but they were never going to do it for her. They were never going to see her eat with open jaws and suck her fingers as she gave chips to the dog. You had to have your compassion paid for to do this job.
‘Don’t go,’ said Serena. ‘Please don’t go. I’m frightened.’
There’s a ritual, see? Janice would tell her husband. A blackmail ritual, when she tries to stop me going, only it doesn’t correspond with my hours.
‘Course you aren’t frightened. You don’t know the meaning of the word.’
‘What verb?’ Serena was suddenly angry; terribly angry. Janice paused with her hand on the door latch, looking out to the comfort of her red car. In that, home soon. Sooner the better.
‘A bit cross, maybe. Never frightened, not you. Don’t worry about it, love. See you soon.’
That was a ritual too, the use of simple words and simpler promises. She remembered closing the door on that sullen and disappointed face with its sharp features, big soft eyes hinting at the splendour of all that former beauty, blowing kisses as she got in the driving seat and went hell for leather out of the rutted drive and on to the road across the fields. By the time she was halfway to the church, the music blared, making a cocoon of the car, making her relax too much. She missed one of the biggest potholes, bounced into another, felt a thump on the bottom of the still new car.
The wages of guilt. She was not only ten minutes under time, but fifteen and that included getting out of the house. She stopped by the church, got out to examine the car in the thin light of the winter sky, bending and squinting beneath it as if what she might see could make any difference. Really, daughter or son had no cause to come back and take on this old lady, but, supposing there was any money in the till, they should fill in the potholes in the road so that other people, on their wages, did not have to ruin their cars when they happened to be in a temper themselves. Then she relaxed, let her breath out: there was nothing she could do. Why rush home anyway? Home was where the heart was, but it meant more demands. Home was halfway sustained by Mrs Burley’s cash: she could not afford to feel churlish, or wish for the end of this era.
So she stood by the graveyard in the dark, smoking the cigarette that was mandatory in the Burley household, forbidden in her own, watching the sky. Outside the sky was a different creature from the sky observed longingly from the inside of window panes. It was lighter and brighter, full of comforting mystery, not really dark at all. Hope in October; must have been the crocuses out of the pantry window, made her think that way.
At the end of that lumpy drive over the fields, where the track met the car park next to the church, she faced a cottage. Nice couple with absent children moving about in there, and nothing else but her smoke and the dim knowledge that she should not, in this sudden delirium of free time, lean against the other car parked alongside. There was movement behind the cottage windows. Horrible curtains, she thought. Cheap.
She remembered, with a slight and guilty amusement, the relations between these worthy neighbours and Mrs Burley after the latter had written off their motor car in a head-on collision. Mrs Burley did not like giving way. End of Serena’s driving licence; end of neighbourly goodwill, since she had not seen fit to apologize. Difficult to forgive someone who wrote off your car: she could see it now, all over their front lawn. She sniggered silently at the thought. Then there was a soft crunching of footsteps, which made her freeze without real fear. Bloody George. Appearing behind her as if she needed supporting.
‘You shouldn’t smoke,’ he said. ‘Bad for your health.’
‘So is sneaking up on people in the dark, you silly bugger. What you doing here?’
Only George, the harmless one who had given her the creeps at first, until she found they got on fine, running the place comfortably between them, provided George was given the illusion of being in charge and also given his manly credit for being the only one who could possibly make Serena obey an order she did not already see the advantage of obeying.
‘Dunno. Coming back to the car. Don’t it feel like midnight, and we haven’t even reached the news on the radio?’ There was a mute accusation in that, a reminder of the time, five minutes over eight, but twenty since she had left the house.
‘Serena told me her husband’s buried in this graveyard. She told me a while back, so I planted this crocus. Thought I’d tend to it, so I went to see Sal at the end of the road, to get some water in case they needed it.’
Janice wondered how it was that George always got to know everyone’s name. She must have been coming here a good many years, but George, in his three, knew the names for all the faces she had ever seen. It was not a mere semblance of control, she realized; it was complete.
‘Then I thought, you can’t have weeds on a grave. I’ll have to go on tending Edward’s grave, I thought. Not that anything’s growing, apart from the crocus. Funny, innit? You and me here. No one else.’
Glory be, thought Janice, listening with admiration and a faint sense of outrage: he’s on first-name terms with the dead as well.
‘I bumped my car, George. Be an angel and have a look at it for me, will you? I don’t understand these things.’
He had turned away from her, not that he ever came close, hands in his pockets; harmless, a bolshie little man, short of leg, squat, powerful and utterly benign, keeping a good distance. ‘Look at them stars,’ he said. ‘Better than my crocuses, and longer lasting.’
He had a torch, ever well-equipped, lay on the ground and pulled himself under the car without a word of protest. She could hear his breathing, a grunting that turned to humming as the light played. The humming stilled her conscience that he should be so willing, but she was still pleased when he emerged, stood and dusted himself off. George never seemed to feel the cold and nothing was ever too much trouble.
‘Nothing,’ he said. She doubted if he knew anything more about cars than she did, but allowed herself to be reassured.
She moved within three feet of him, never going closer. The sky was clear as water, dark while luminous. They pivoted together, noticed of one accord. A flickering light from the house half a mile away, nothing more than an unnatural glow.
‘George,’ said Janice, querulously, ‘what’s that?’
‘She’s on fire,’ said George, almost admiringly. ‘That silly old love is on fire.’
The fire had taken hold of the outhouse nearest the kitchen door. It had a back wall made of brick, wooden beams which burst and splintered. Serena, who had put the ash from the fire into the bin designated for that purpose, did not think of her own actions as being the cause. She had found the first burst of flame, from the lawn-mower petrol, also stored in there along with a mercifully short supply of coal, slightly alarming, but now the sheer sound was exhilarating. She had trailed across the yard from the back door to within three yards of the heat, repeatedly carrying a mug of water which she flung half-heartedly towards the inferno. Wind blew the smoke away from herself and the house: she knew no sensation of fear, but the work tired her, so she stood and watched. Then went indoors to her desk, looked for paper to burn, all those letters, all those useless words, but when she reached the door of the dining room she forgot what her errand had been, went back and got that thing that played tapes from the kitchen. The flames died so quickly: it seemed such a shame that this vision of heat and light should be so short-lived.
When the fire brigade arrived, Serena was dancing. The tape machine was bellowing forth a military march, to which she waltzed and smiled, and invited them to join in. Serena had fond memories of bonfires. And dances.
‘Isn’t it lovely?’ she asked them. ‘Will you dance?’
They stared at her, bewildered, themselves distracted from this fire, full of mild anti-climax. The coals glowed in the dark: it was more like a cheery blaze, a frivolous waste of household fuel and the beams that had once supported a roof. Then, while others unloaded the hose and went to work, George took Serena in his arms, and waltzed her slowly across the overgrown lawn.
Janice watched them laughing and felt sick, with a feeling of terror she could not define. It was not so much that she knew she could not bring herself to work for a pyromaniac because she was afraid of fire, but it was a tide of frightful premonition. It sounded so well, Serena and George: it was a combination of willpower and victim and she could not work out for the life of her which way round it was.
Then she went indoors and screamed down the phone to Mrs Burley’s daughter a litany of recriminations she did not feel, accusations that were unjust, warnings that were a reaction to shock and a situation she could suddenly see was untenable. She did not look for a result. She was not searching for fairness, justice, resolution. She was screaming against the fire which could have engulfed her and might not have happened if she had left on time. Your mother will die here, she shouted.
And that was how Isabel Burley came home to look after her mother. Because the appeal to do so came not from a bullying brother, but from someone else, who could no longer pick up the pieces. And, of course, because of her own agenda.
3.30 in the morning
The flames had been fun, but it was no good trying to be clever. Difficult enough to concentrate on being good.
It was never as bad in the very middle of the night like this, when there was nothing to see but darkness and she could imagine that tomorrow everything would be back to normal. She was energized by the dark, like the evil spirits fostered by Bibles and fairy stories, but Serena Burley did not hold with God, never had. No merciful God would ever do this to her. Only a sadistic creator, motivated by malice, could first tease his servant with the irritations of age and then exercise this power for terror. It was the work of malevolence, and although she would address respectful pleadings towards any handsome deity of the male sex who would give her back her mind, she would not curtsy towards a psychopathic dictator.
‘Damn, bloody, bloody hell.’
In the early hours of the morning, her mind was as clear as a bell. She could think in whole sentences and could even tell herself what a shame it was to have no belief, because it would be exquisite to pray in words and have the illusion of someone reading the despair. The fact that her mind was clear for as long as this in the hours before dawn could be construed as a gesture towards mercy from her cretinous creator, she supposed. During this time, designated as the darkest for the soul, but in reality the only time when there was no distraction at all, the words did as she asked and turned into phrases. Perhaps this God kept different hours. On second thoughts, she considered it was a refinement of heavenly cruelty to give her spells of clarity like this, at these invariable times of day, when she could remember who she was and what she had done. Serena adored these interludes and dreaded them.
She called for pen and paper, snapping her fingers towards the imaginary servant in the corner; the pen appeared in her hand and the paper on her lap. She wrote, furiously.
Who was she, then? Serena Burley, aged seventy-five, one-time intellect and beauty of this and other parishes, citizen of the wider world where she had travelled with her husband as the culture and the foil to his grand but limited mind. He dug oil wells and gave lectures on petroleum science: she filled houses with books, flowers, letters and charm, because that was her vocation. She provided en route the statutory two babies, who were not a vocation at all.
‘I quite forget how we did it,’ Serena remarked out loud, shaking her head, laughing. Her hand paused; she rubbed her wrist. The paper was curiously blank for all those words. She continued the record. Speaking out loud assisted the business of writing.
A goodish life, she wrote, in which she had been well served by long-suffering people. Her sister in particular, plus others. They had chosen to love Serena and all who belonged to her with a level of self-sacrifice that had been vital to her growing children, and a source of excruciating irritation to herself.
That was what charm had achieved for her. Enormous charm. She thought with a brief smile of self-admiration how it was she could define guilt, but had no experience of it.
What a joy it had been to use her witty talent with words to threaten, cajole, flatter, achieve. So few had the skill to communicate: she was one of them. Words made demand meet supply. She wrote laboriously: 7 … absolutely … adore men and I love the poetry of words.’
Shitting, miserable, fucking arseholes … Spit. Cunt. Rats.
The writing seemed to have slipped on to her wrist. She shook the Biro and spoke to it sternly.
If she had a tape recorder, like the one she’d used for Edward’s lectures, she would be able to say exactly what this condition was like. It was the nightmare of an operation where the patient is merely drugged, not anaesthetized, rendered immobile and helpless in the face of hideous pain and the knowledge that the surgeon is removing the wrong leg. Or trying to push the baby back in. The image made her cry and giggle at the same time and reminded her that there was no time for crying. Crying only served to eclipse this hour into more of the bumbling confusion that filled the day, apart from those crucial minutes, sometimes a whole thirty at a time, when she could control the clouds and make them move away from the sun.
‘TTT. Tutt tutt!’
The moments of reprieve were never long enough for her to do the things that were imperative. Such as phone Isabel and tell her never to come home again; make her promise faithfully she would do no such thing, the less she saw, the better. Tell her that she had not been a good mother to her daughter in that awful, pious sense people meant and she had no expectation of the silly child being a good daughter either, so there. She had never been a good wife either. She had never learned to cook, but could drive with all the aplomb of a chauffeur. How good she was at organizing parties. She hummed to the tune of a dance. Mantra words, lovely words. Rabbits, cats, dogs lavatory poo and big fat pricks …
‘Crabb’d age and youth, Cannot live together.’ Who said that? Crabbed age cannot live with anything. Serena felt as if her breath would kill a plant: only the plastic variety would survive. It was no good luxuriating in all these words; there was the real business to be done. Crabbed age should die.
Oh, for one of those re
corder things, simply to prove to someone in the morning that she could still articulate. She could go downstairs now, telling them all about it at the same time. Such grand facts to record for posterity. Such as, this floor is very cold, these stairs grow steeper and longer, this carpet is rough and someone has stolen my shoes. She paused for the black moment by the living-room door when she did not know where she was and the terror hit in waves, and then, in a flood of perspiration, it passed when she saw familiar objects, waltzed round them, touching and nodding, saying hallo. The hallway leading from the stairs at the front of the house to the back was colder still and the floor in the kitchen was a chill that burned. Someone had stolen her shoes.
Bitch, cunt on wheels.
So cold, she would tell them: the light of the moon, coming into my kitchen like a damn thief and if George had hidden the knives again, she would fillet the man with a fork. Empty threats. This was the place where she started to fail. Serena had always been less at home in kitchens than living rooms or any place where she had been hostess, dispensing of herself. Talking, flirting, listening, touching. It seemed that darling George had begun to trust her again since she had become more careful. There were knives in a wooden block, standing upright like exclamation marks. What she should really be doing now was what those Japanese men of honour were supposed to do and that silly bitch Madame Butterfly did. Kneel, thrust the thing into the breast-bone, yell something final. The thought of the pain was frightening, and anyway, the dog would laugh. Not a bad thing, perhaps; she would have given her back teeth to make someone laugh out loud instead of that sometimes respectful, sometimes insolent stare, tinged with puzzled sadness, which she got if she was lucky.
Let's Dance Page 2