Dancing in the Dark (30 page)

‘Theodora, I think you need to understand something.' He looks at me properly for the first time since he arrived.

‘What's that?'

‘What happened on Corfu was an absolutely natural event, a man and a woman getting it together under the moonlight. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that.'

‘For most people, perhaps, but not for me.'

‘Lighten up, Theodora, for God's sake. It was no big deal.'

I stand up. How right I was about him. I'm shaking with something between anger and regret. ‘It
should
have been a big deal.'

‘Sex between two consenting adults? Come on, woman, you're not a starry-eyed teenager any more.'

‘I don't think I ever was, but that's beside the point.' I want to be more to him than just a consenting adult. But that's all I am, all it meant, just another conquest, another fuck.

‘So what exactly
is
the point?' He sounds so cold.

How can I explain that for the first time in my life I felt that I'd met a companion, that sex – fucking, bonking, call it what you like – had put a gloss on the relationship for which it was not ready. The chance to grow slowly, to mature naturally, had been removed. I shrug, visualizing all the tender little roots which were never given the chance to hook themselves into the soil of our friendship. ‘Never mind. If you can't see it . . .'

‘I'll tell you what I can see and that's that you're – to say the least – deeply immature.'

Anger conquers regret. ‘And you're an arrogant sod with writer's block,' I shout.

He gives me one of those How-The-Hell-Did-I-Get-Into-This? looks. ‘I came down here with absolutely no ulterior motives. I wanted to show you something, talk about it, something you might be extremely interested in, and you start acting as though you belong to a closed order of nuns.'

‘I didn't ask you to come. You could easily have telephoned.'

‘Actually, no I couldn't. You'd need to see it.' His mouth twists angrily. ‘You think I only showed up here in the hope of getting into your knickers again, don't you?'

‘You ought to have known
that
wasn't going to be on the cards,' I say, ‘not now, not ever.'

‘Well, fuck you.'

‘Not if I can help it.'

We glare at each other. He lifts his shoulders, spreads his hands like a Frenchman. ‘All I intended was to invite you out to lunch and see how your trip to the States went, maybe tell you about my visit to Dublin.'

‘You've done that.'

‘Mission partly accomplished. Right. Well, I won't hang about, I'm sure you've got better things to do.'

‘I most certainly have.'

He walks back towards the house while I watch him go. From the set of his shoulders, I can see that he is not only angry but also hurt. He is a gentle man, and I have made him fierce. I know that I ought to call him back, drink wine with him, talk about other things. If we're going to part, it should be as friends.

Instead, I just let him go.

Story of my life.

What a mess I'm making of things. When I hear a car start up at the front of the house, then move along the lane and finally out of earshot, I get up and walk unsteadily into the house where I splash brandy into a balloon glass and drink it down neat. Pour another slug. Medicinal purposes only. The room shimmers, although there are no tears in my eyes. Only in my heart. I pick up a piece of glass shaped like an egg, and set it down again. I plump up the cushions of the sofa. Straighten a picture, reposition a photograph.

Somewhere I'd read a letter in which a woman explained that the reason she had so loved a man who had just died was because he never expected her to be anything different from what she was
.
That's it, I think. That's Fergus. I can always be myself with him, stroppy, irritable, lazy, comfortable. Even when we are together, we are still able to maintain our own separateness. The woman killed herself eventually, unable to face life without her beloved.

And then I wonder why I am thinking such things when Fergus and I aren't in love and now are not even lovers.

I
spend the next couple of days working furiously at my desk or in the garden. Trina is gone, Harry doesn't show up, Marnie phones in to say she has a summer cold and won't be back until the beginning of next week. I wonder if she is really sick or simply trying to avoid me.

At night, I stand under the shower for long enough to rinse the dirt out of my hair and the sweat from my body, before collapsing into bed. The phone is unplugged, the house locked up. On the second afternoon, someone knocks at the front door in a fairly persistent manner before finally giving up. The postman pushes mail through the letterbox. I suppose I must have eaten something during that time, gone to the loo, possibly even brushed my teeth. I resolutely shove Fergus to one side.

But I am no nearer to a resolution. In fact, I'm in an almost worse state than before. Let it go, I tell myself. You've come this far without knowing who your father is – what difference will it make? Then I think, no, I ought to know, it is my right, just as it is my mother's right not to tell me. But she's not going to.

Right . . .

Deep breath.

Onwards and upwards.

Clean sweep, new brooms, fresh starts.

The community garden is bustling with activity, despite the fact that it's gone six thirty in the evening. Three kids are working on the banked flowerbeds and wave when they see me. A couple of young black girls with somnolent babies in pushchairs are giggling together. An old man with trousers tied round the ankle with string, wearing one sneaker and one brown leather brogue, is drinking beer and reading the paper.

Carrying a bag of bulbs, I join the kids – a boy and two girls – and for a while we weed in companionable silence.

‘How's Trina Hawkins going, miss?' the boy asks after a while.

‘I . . . uh . . . I don't know.'

‘Wasn't she doing work experience with you?'

‘Yes.'

‘She's working at Lucille's,' the other girl says. ‘You know, where I had my hair straightened.'

‘What, she there long-term?'

‘Dunno. Can't see Treen being a hairdresser for the rest of her life, can you?'

‘If Trina's left, you going to be looking for another work experience person?' the boy asks me.

‘I don't know. I haven't thought about it.' I'm more interested in what the girls are saying.

‘Only I was kind of thinking of the same sort of thing, when I leave school,' he says. ‘Something agricultural, you know? Horticultural? Maybe I could . . .'

And maybe he couldn't. I've got the message. Only a few months ago, my life consisted almost entirely of work and solitude. My spare hours were my own, to do with as I wished. Now, it seems like everyone in the world wants to marry me and have my babies.

‘I'll think about it,' I say, ‘but it won't be this year, I'm afraid.'

‘I still got another year at school,' he says.

‘Good.' I envisage my quiet house filling up with stray dogs and lame ducks, needy people demanding things from me which I am not qualified to provide.

‘I'd really like the chance to work with you, miss.'

‘Leave it out, Kev,' says one of the girls. ‘Don't push yourself in where you're not wanted.'

‘Get stuffed,' Kevin says.

‘Miss doesn't want you, can't you see?'

‘I didn't say that at all,' I say quickly.

‘No, but it's obvious, innit?'

‘Stands to reason,' the other girl says.

‘Yeah, like you'd know all about it,' says Kevin.

They bicker amicably among themselves.

I dig in my spade and lift some earth. ‘Bulbs,' I tell them. ‘For next spring.' I push in the firm teardrop shapes, visualizing narcissi and daffodils spilling white and yellow down the bank to the edge of the pond.

‘I been growing stuff in our back garden at home,' Kevin says. ‘Planted a clematis over my dad's toolshed.'

‘Did he like it?'

‘Reckons it's right poncy, pink flowers and all, but my mum's dead chuffed.'

‘Talking of Trina Hawkins, did you hear she broke it off with Mick Roberts?' the first girl says to the second. ‘Give the ring back and all.'

‘Yeah? Wonder why.'

‘She's got more brains than him, that's why.'

‘He's all right, though. Wouldn't mind a bit of that myself.'

‘Go for it, girl. He's still available, last I heard.'

Trina's no longer engaged? Maybe this is my chance to persuade her to come back. I look at my watch. ‘It's time I left.'

‘Got a hot date tonight, miss?'

‘Sort of.'

‘Don't do anything I wouldn't do.'

‘Gives her a lot of bleeding scope, that does,' says Kevin.

‘Oh yeah, like you would know, you total zero.' The girls laugh scornfully. Kevin doesn't appear to be crushed by their apparent contempt.

All three of them grin and wave again as I leave.

The front door of the Hawkins house has been painted a bright egg-yellow since I was last there. I lift the knocker and let it drop against the plate. My hands are sweaty; if Trina rejects me again, I fear that I shall burst into tears.

Mr Hawkins opens the door on a wave of cigarette smoke and fried fish. ‘You'll be wanting to speak to Trina,' he says.

‘Yes.'

‘I'll tell her you're here.'

‘Mr Hawkins . . .' I put out my hand to stop him turning away. ‘I understand she's broken off her . . . her engagement.'

‘Good thing, too. Her mum's not best pleased, mind you. She's got grandchildren on her mind but I say Trina's much too young to be settling down.' In his eyes are the broad highways down which he wishes his beloved daughter to travel. ‘Anyway . . .' He smiles at me and turns down the passage. I hear him call Trina's name, and I turn to look across the road, praying that she won't refuse to see me.

She's behind me. ‘What d'you want this time?'

‘I heard that you broke off your engagement.'

‘What's it got to do with you?'

‘Nothing. That's not why I came.'

‘Why did you, then?'

‘I wanted to give you the present I got for you when I was in the States.'

That stops her. It's difficult to maintain hostility in the face of kindness. I delve into my bag and bring out a package.

‘What is it?' she says suspiciously, as though she thinks I might have brought her a gift-wrapped dead rat or a severed hand.

‘Open it and find out.'

‘I don't mean that . . . why you giving it to me?'

‘Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't you recently have a birthday which I didn't know about so I didn't give you anything? Call it a belated birthday gift. Besides, I thought you'd like it. Simple as that.'

She bends her head and concentrates on pulling at the ribbon. Her movements are slow and reluctant. She pulls out the box, reads the label, takes off the lid and stops again as she sees the swathing white tissue paper. She says something I can't hear.

‘What?'

‘Why you being nice to me?' she mutters.

Because I want to nurture you, I want to say. Because if you are watered and mulched and encouraged, you will grow straight and tall. Because you are loved by your parents and that has made you beautiful. Because I wish to step inside your magic circle and be allowed to love you, too. ‘Why shouldn't I be?'

‘You don't know me or anything.'

‘I know enough.' There is soil under her fingernails. Her shoulders are hunched. Such a little thing. She yanks at my heart. ‘Besides,' I continue, ‘people have been nice to me over the years. Maybe I just want to pass some of it on to someone else. And also . . .' It's hard for me to say this, ‘I want you to forgive me.'

She uncovers the handbag I'd purchased for her in Boston. Draws in a breath. ‘Hey. That's
well
cool.' She rubs the fine blue suede gently with the ball of her thumb. ‘Classy, innit? Gorgeous. Feels more like silk than leather.'

‘The reason I bought it was –' I reach into my bag once more and bring out a cotton drawstring bag – ‘it matches these.' I hand it over. ‘I'd have given them to you earlier but . . . the timing wasn't right.'

She grins at that and I am encouraged.

‘They're not new,' I say, as she pulls out a pair of Nancy Halloran's lovely shoes. ‘And they might not even fit but if they do . . . There are more where those came from.'

‘Jimmy Choo!
Wow!
' She looks up at me for the first time. ‘I've read about him. His shoes cost a fortune.'

‘They belonged to my best friend's grandmother,' I said.

‘Pretty groovy kind of grandmother.' Trina examines the beautifully made blue shoes. ‘These are really ace!'

‘Nancy collected shoes. Expensive shoes. She must have had like a hundred and fifty pairs. Also, she had tiny feet, like you.'

‘I'm size three.'

‘Same as Nancy.' I smile at her. ‘Try them on, Trina.'

From the end of the passage her father calls. ‘Aren't you going to ask the lady in, Treen?' he says. ‘Can't stand about on the doorstep all night.'

She looks at me, then with a quick little twist of her mouth, indicates me into the house. We go into the kitchen and sit at the table where Mr Hawkins is drinking a beer from the can and reading the racing page. There's no sign of Trina's mother or the three brothers. In the middle of the table is another container garden, pebbled paths running across moss into a copse of sedum and tiny firs, a flat piece of lawn leading to bushes where a miniature Venus de Milo stands on a plinth. It's absolutely charming.