Let's Dance

by Frances Fyfield

  ‘Go and keep Mother company, would you?’ she asked, withdrawing from him, no longer the flirt. ‘I’ve got to get George out of the cellar.’

  He held her at arms’ length, looked at her questioningly. It was a look which said, ‘Do you know what you are doing?’ but he did not accompany it with words. It was a satisfying thing to have her judgement unquestioned, a novel experience.

  Serena was trying to attract Andrew’s attention, pulling at his sleeve. The departure of all those lovely men had left her at a loose end. Andrew was the only one left.

  ‘Come and see my decorations,’ she demanded coyly.

  ‘Of course,’ Andrew said gravely. ‘Delighted.’

  Isabel opened the cellar door, put on the light and got on with peeling potatoes. After counting she added several more and put on the radio, loud. She could see the snow falling outside the window, and wished she was making a more ambitious meal. Never mind, they could have candles. Give the place that party air Serena craved. No one would be going anywhere tonight.

  George emerged into the warmth of the kitchen blinking like a mole. Shrivelled with cold and the more corrosive effect of anxiety, he stumbled in and smiled at her. A proper smile.

  He was dirty and the smell of him overcame all other odours in the kitchen. Isabel considered the immediate offer of a bath, then decided that this was the kind of implied insult that would offend him. It could wait.

  ‘Could you lift in that coal for the fire, George? Just outside the door. Thanks ever so.’

  As if nothing had happened. She was the Janice, he the friend. Each to his proper place.

  ‘Can’t let the fire go out,’ he said.

  ‘Oh no. Never do that.’

  He stood awkwardly, looking round the kitchen as if he had never seen it before, nodding with satisfaction. The dog stuck her nose into his crotch: he fondled her big head absently. Order had been restored in here. Isabel continued peeling potatoes.

  ‘Is she all right then?’

  ‘Yes, George, she’s fine. Oh, you know. I lose my temper with her from time to time, but I’ve got better at it. The dog’s been missing you as well.’

  He nodded, easing slightly. He was not in a position to judge someone for loss of temper. Then his legs seemed to buckle and he sat abruptly on the edge of the table, arms folded across his chest, like a drunk pretending to be sober.

  ‘Oh dear, George, take a chair. I don’t think you’re looking after yourself properly. Have some tea.’

  She thrust it in front of him, along with biscuits, continued with the supper so that she would not watch him eat chocolate-chip cookies with the same speed the dog ate dinner. He was temporarily restored, his complexion turning from yellow-white to pink. There were the dark marks of exhaustion beneath his eyes. The health was fair, she decided. George would last a long time out in the cold. Far longer than she would have done herself.

  ‘Thanks,’ he said.

  ‘No bother, George. Sorry about all that row, earlier. Ma set the alarm off. Why are the police looking for you, George?’

  He grunted. ‘I beat up one of the burglars. May be that.’

  ‘Oh, I see. You’d better stay here, then. They won’t be back for a while.’

  There was a comfortable silence.

  ‘Do you know what, George, I think I’ll poach this fish rather than fry it. What do you think?’

  ‘Fry it.’

  The dog’s head on his knees was like a hot-water bottle.

  ‘And I think I’ll put some masking tape over that bloody alarm switch.’

  ‘Good idea.’

  Another pause. The sound of waltz music drifted down the corridor.

  George cleared his throat. ‘I used to come back and read to her at night, you know,’ he volunteered. ‘Sit on the bed and read to her. Nothing more than that. I wouldn’t, you know. I mean, I couldn’t.’

  ‘Shame,’ said Isabel.

  ‘What do you mean, shame?’

  ‘Shame you had to go home, you silly bugger. Shame about people talking. There’s five bedrooms.’

  ‘She’d tell me things. About her husband loving you and that sister of hers best. About places they’d been. Wonderful places. She didn’t want to come back.’ He looked down at the big-eyed dog, communicating with it. Isabel waited, heart aching with a dull remnant of the old, sad jealousy.

  ‘Talking and dancing stopped her wanting to kill herself,’ George added. ‘She hated it, you know. Hated it like poison. Losing the words. I kept on taking away the knives and things. Perhaps I shouldn’t have done. People should die, if they want.’

  The fish sizzled in the pan. The smell of frying food made him salivate.

  ‘You did everything for the best, George. That’s what we all try to do, isn’t it? Don’t let her break your heart.’

  She began to set the table. Four knives, four forks; he counted them slowly and audibly, suspicion dawning.

  ‘There’s Andrew as well, George. Don’t worry about him. Now, will you go and tell them supper’s nearly ready? You’ll just have time for a wash. Trust me, OK?’

  He did. It filled him with wonder.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Trust me.

  Bob said it was utterly mad and Dick agreed, but the one was in pain, the other halfway loco, and both had taken the appropriate anaesthetic after going to see Derek in hospital.

  There had not been any significant sympathy for Derek. Neither of them liked him all that much, at least not enough to feel desire for revenge on his behalf, but he was a horrible sight. Bob was the family man, so he took the grapes, a touching tribute for a fellow human being who was required to take sustenance through a straw. Dick remarked on the sensitivity of the gesture. Both of them looked the souls of concern as they crept towards his bed. A couple of concerned drinking companions. Nothing very much was said: they were merely inquiring after his health. From Derek’s supine position they loomed over him, looking by turns avuncular, sinister and, finally, dangerous. In the sterility of the ward the blood and sweat smell of Dick, exaggerated by the heat, wafted towards Derek’s busted nose like a lethal perfume. They promised to come back. He put up two fingers.

  Purpose achieved, they were still shocked. Shocked into the fourth round of Carlsberg, which deadened pain nicely. This is the last chance, Dick said.

  Last chance for what? Well, we aren’t going to get as much as we should for the big lot, and I reckon that old bird must have some jewellery somewhere, stands to reason, doesn’t it? And you want that clock. Doncha? And she’s got a cellar. We never looked in the cellar. Booze for Christmas. We forgot those candlesticks.

  He was right. Bob had dreamed of that grandfather clock in his waking hours, wanting something to measure the reaches of the night.

  That was all, Dick said. Jewellery and the clock, nothing else heavy.

  Why now? Bob asked, thinking how he might never work again.

  Because Dick had a van that night, and if they waited until Derek was better he would not have a van, on account of a couple of days before Christmas he would be laid off, you bet.

  You want the girl, Bob said, admiring the nerve.

  No, I don’t, plenty of girls and that one’s too thin, believe me. Dick’s jowled face was turned in the direction of the plump bums lining the bar.

  Bob jeered. After a week, they’ll have that house on a trigger. Bristling with alarms.

  Na. They’ll be feeling safe again. We could go anyway. Just to have a look.

  What about the snow?

  What about it?

  It was a real party. Andrew remembered Serena and the fireworks, the way the sight of them had transformed her face with joy. Sensation was what she wanted, to wallow in it and forget her constant puzzlement. Lights, music, the distraction of sound and visual stimulation. Around the kitchen table, by candlelight, there was one interruption for the telephone. Robert Burley calling: was everything under control? In the background, he could hear jazz, male laughter, Sere
na’s high-pitched giggle. In the foreground his sister sounding breathless.

  ‘Who’s there?’ he wanted to know. Isabel almost mentioned George, bit her tongue in time and sounded carefree enough to worry Robert profoundly.

  ‘Oh, just a couple of people. Mother’s having a lovely time.’ Mother, centre stage, not worrying about words, pulling faces towards the phone, making them laugh at her, enjoying it.

  ‘Don’t forget the alarm system.’ Robert’s answer to everything. Lock the trouble out.

  ‘Never. Wouldn’t dream of it.’

  For a moment, she was sorry for him.

  There was nothing to be kept at bay but the snow, which stopped and started, started and stopped. George decided he would regard this as his Christmas. Isabel, his friend Isabel, had already told him he could have Robert Burley’s room for as long as he wanted. He had one task, she told him, one only. He must teach the dog to bark. She said this gravely. He was slow to see the joke, but when he did his laughter was cataclysmic. His face was shiny after a bath and his giggling was of the infectious kind, a neighing sound that was funny in itself, sparking unconscious mimicry. Isabel no longer minded that she had never made her mother laugh as he now did: that was someone else’s privilege. Hers was to provide the fish and chips and pudding with tinned cream as if it was a feast.

  It was a feast. Andrew had put coloured paper round the candlesticks; when the candles burned low, it caught alight. Brief flames. Shrieks, like a children’s party. Food consumed with nothing left over for the dog.

  No one asked George questions, but he told them about where he had lived. Andrew told George that perhaps they could talk about a job, when all the fuss had died down. George took that as a literal assurance that the fuss would die down, and in this semblance of family, holding Serena’s hand beneath the table, there was nothing that was not possible. Andrew wondered at himself, offering work to a man with such a record, purely on the basis of his own and Isabel’s judgement of a good heart. How spontaneous of him. Perhaps he was losing his respectability, growing to like rogues and act without analysis, like his father.

  Then Serena said she wanted to dance. The wine that Andrew had produced along with the sherry had been consumed. George did not like it, took a little, Serena copied him, Isabel and Andrew drank the rest. There was not enough for excess, sufficient to oil the mood of loud relaxation. All of us against the world, and the world cannot get at us tonight. Nor any other night. Why not dance?

  ‘How very old fashioned,’ Isabel murmured. ‘Like a 1950s film. Waltzing in front of the fire. Andrew, I don’t know how to do it.’

  ‘Slow, slow, quick, quick slow … Or is that a quickstep? Just shuffle.’

  Serena had forgotten how to dance. She could manage a fairly rhythmic movement with energy, with George holding her at arms’ length, as if they were dancing the tango. Which, in turn, they tried, like a quartet of clowns, with exaggerated, pouting faces and dramatic gestures. That made them weak with laughter, and they managed better when they moved to rock and roll. Anyone of any age could jig around to that. It was all deeply, gloriously silly. No one in that company was wider than the most foolish.

  The hours blurred into bedtime. Serena faded first. George took her to bed. A little later, when she and Andrew went upstairs by common consent, they could hear his voice reading to her, and, later still, his movement from her room into the one that had been Robert’s. George was an oddball, but a gentleman.

  Andrew sat on the side of Isabel’s bed. The rooms were no longer cold: the house seemed to have generated enough heat for an army.

  ‘I haven’t an ounce of passion in me,’ Isabel said cheerfully.

  ‘I could tell you a story,’ he suggested. ‘Or I could just lie beside you, quiet as a mouse.’

  ‘That would be nice.’ She yawned. ‘I’m worried about George. One of these days he might realize that he isn’t as important to her as she is to him. No one is.’

  ‘It can wait. Am I important to you?’

  ‘I don’t know yet. You have to wait too.’ She hesitated, trying to remember something, but she was slightly tipsy, on a range of sensations which included a novel feeling of calm which came from having done something right, entirely by accident.

  ‘Tell me something,’ she asked, sleepily, as she lay on the bed and pulled a blanket over her clothes. ‘If you were to write a person a letter, would you use exclamation marks?’

  He considered the question. ‘Whatever for? I thought you only put them in to show that someone was shouting.’

  ‘That’s all right, then.’

  At about four in the morning Serena left her room and went downstairs. The key for the door was easy to find and the alarm was silent. She looked at the snow, first from one window, then the next, shaking her head at the marvel. It had snowed on and off while they danced; something so comforting about the snow; in the morning it would be different. The living room still held its warmth; she hummed to herself and turned two brief pirouettes, which made her dizzy. She looked at the dictaphone in her hand, puzzled over it and threw it away. No energy, these young things, going to bed when there was so much else to do. Such as get out when the going was good. Quit when you were ahead.

  Serena tried to write a message in the condensation on the window. It was going to say, Love you really, darlings, you don’t need me, but the phrases were too complicated and her arms were tired. She managed to scrawl ‘luck’ before she forgot the import of the message or why she was trying to write anything. Did she mean ‘lick’ or ‘fuck’? The snow outside was mesmerizingly white.

  She had difficulty opening the back door, because of the unfamiliar key, but the sheer desire to paddle her feet in the white stuff prevailed. She liked the sound of her awkward footsteps over the yard. The fresh snow creaked beneath her feet.

  The drive was unrecognizable, a carpet of white. She made for the gates, where the road dipped and the snow was deepest. It was all unutterably perfect, warm and welcoming as cotton wool. Then she lay down and listened to the silence. She crossed one hand across her bosom and, with the other, conducted the music of the stars.

  The van proceeded over the fields because there was no choice. This was an even worse example of insanity than either of the other two expeditions. It was imperative to go on because there was nowhere to turn. It had become an exercise in survival. They would not stop at the house, not for anything. They would simply use the gateway to try and get the vehicle round and then go back. Get out before they were really stuck. The taste in Bob’s mouth was sour, stale beer. Regret that he, the leader, should have let himself be led. Dick said nothing about anything. He made muttering noises to the engine, words of encouragement which sounded more like threatening prayers. His breath smelt of anxiety. In between other noises, he whistled between his teeth.

  There was less snow through the woods. Dick exhaled a sigh of relief. He turned into the gates and began to reverse back. The wheels spun, encountered an obstruction and the van bumped forward, violently, rocking them in their seats. Bob moaned: it felt as if he had been stabbed in the back. Dick gunned the engine, swearing. The wheels spun again and they bounced back. He wasn’t a wimp like Derek; he was a good driver when he was desperate.

  The ground floor of the house was illuminated like a Christmas tree. Worse than the town centre at five in the afternoon and far more welcoming, it beckoned all strangers.

  Bob could see tinsel at the kitchen window. ‘Fuck this for a game of monkeys,’ he whispered. ‘Get us out of here.’

  ‘All right, all right, all right.’

  Halfway through the woods Dick began to shake. Bob did not understand. It was easier going back. In the light of the moon, they could follow their own tracks. Dick shook like a man in the throes of delirium tremens. His teeth chattered as if they would break.

  ‘Whassa matter?’ Bob shouted. ‘What now?’

  ‘We hit something, Bob. I know we did.’

  ‘Snow, you daft bastard,
only snow.’

  ‘No. A fox. Something. I felt it move.

  ‘Fox? Dog? For Jesus’ sake, stop crying, Dick. Whatever it was, we probably did them a favour.’

  May God have mercy on her soul.

  Robert Burley blustered. He had brought his son to the funeral, for the good of the boy’s education and so that he himself would have a hand to hold on either side. Also because he feared there would not be enough of them to give the sensation of a crowd. He vowed to include in his will a clause in favour of cremation. That way, he would save his relatives from having to hang around in the cold. The thought of a funeral in summer did not enter his mind. The two did not go together. The old died in the winter.

  Or they were murdered by neglect. Nothing much preyed upon his mind other than a dull sense of being thwarted by the lack of something tangible to blame for the whole sorry condition he was in. His mother had somehow outwitted them. Blackmail in death as well as life, a continuous process.

  He wished, irreverently and again with a maddening sense of being beaten by a short head, that he had steered his mother’s liver-spotted hand into making a will. He could even have done it without her: he could forge her signature well enough. He had always been able to. Anyone could copy her hand, cramped though it had become. Mab had taught her to write: Mab had taught them all.

  Ashes to ashes. Half the insurance money, under the rules of intestacy when it should have been all of it, because the whole thing was Isabel’s fault. There was not the same right in law to charge a person for negligent management of an adult as existed for a child. You could be imprisoned for being drunk in charge of a vehicle, but not for being drunk in charge of a demented old lady. His thoughts were a medley of angry colours, trying to find an outlet for the channel of molten sadness which filled his gut under his suit. Trying to turn it into rage when he knew there really was no room for anger.