Let's Dance (10 page)

‘My God, this car's like a travelling circus,' Joan complained. ‘Why do we have to take so much?'

‘Because we aren't going to a place equipped for kids, as you well know.'

Joan sighed. ‘I wish we didn't have to go at all.'

Joan was a placid wife, but a shrewd one. They made a duty visit to his mother every few weeks, purely to satisfy conscience. This time they were going because Robert had received a valuation on his mother's goods and he also wanted to make sure Isabel was not colluding with the help. He wasn't worried about the house. There were only a few years left on the lease, which made it worth little to any inheritor. The only hope of getting anything out of Mother was keeping the contents intact and keeping her in it. So much for principles. The prospect of a third child was eroding them fast.

Oh, be fair to him Joan told herself, handing the
boy a carton of orange juice with instructions not to spill it. He does care for his mother: he cares for everyone. He's beaten himself to death caring.

‘Is she asleep?'

‘Not yet.'

You could not spoil a child by adoration alone, he told himself. Surely not. It took love of a particular kind to do that. Like the love his father had had for Isabel, who could do no wrong, Father's little piece of perfection. He could remember rushing towards his father on Father's return from a foreign trip and being literally pushed to one side, to stand with his arms outstretched and nothing to hold, because Isabel had been behind him. He might as well have been invisible: so might his mother. It made him burn with humiliation, even now. It was one thing to prefer one child to another, he reflected with the wisdom of parenthood, but you had to pretend to be even-handed. Father had not dissembled. And it was not just Father who preferred Isabel so outrageously: there was also Aunt Mab, who signalled it by leaving her everything. One way and another, Robert Burley felt his sister owed him a lot. He owed her nothing.

The afternoon was pleasant, the drive in the past-its-sell-by-date Ford Sierra uneventful. The boy in the back expressed no curiosity whatever about their destination. When they arrived he got out carefully and ran indoors.

They went to the back door, as family should. The front door was for the parties Robert remembered
before his father died. Gross over-consumption, where Dad danced with his daughter and Mother flirted with the men. Men who were mostly dead now, he supposed. Perhaps Serena's sexy partiality for men might explain the dearth of women friends now. Widows have long memories. Robert doubted if Isabel had thought of that. He contemplated his own life with satisfaction. A serious man was better off with a plain wife.

‘Hallo, Isabel. You look terrific.'

His voice boomed over the garden. Out of the corner of his eye he saw that odd little man, George, sidling away in the direction of the fields. If Robert was startled, not to say faintly satisfied by the change in the sister he had last seen three months before, he did not show it. The slenderness of her was even more extreme: it was pinched. She was breathless and anxious to please. Serena was magnificent. In his bitterness, Robert always chose to forget whose favourite he had been.

‘Darlings, wonderful!'

A flurry of warm, scented kisses, smothering him, arms round him like steel, face nuzzling his hair, her mouth finding his ears and his nose, like a puppy. She would never have shoved him aside.

S
un streamed through the dining-room windows reflecting in the table, which Robert was relieved to see had not been chopped up for firewood. More than a thousand pounds, the valuer had said. They went
straight in to eat, Joan telling Isabel she should not have bothered: they could have gone out and, anyway, they'd bought sandwiches. It was a strange meal: cooked ham in a kind of casserole that tasted of tinned soup, a bit gluey, baked potatoes. Serena fed hers to the dog. The boy, Jack, attached himself to Isabel like a limpet, refusing to eat anything unless she gave her approval to each mouthful. It was almost normal.

Isabel watched her mother, who seemed transfixed by Robert's face. Serena smiled and nodded, apparently following every word: the sight made Isabel choke with sadness. She knew by now that words reached Serena through a fog. She was merely mistress of a splendid, deceptive social façade which knew the value of keeping silent, fooling most of the people, most of the time.

‘What do you do all day?' Robert boomed. Serena laughed, imagining he had said something funny.

‘Nothing,' Isabel said.

What a stupid, unobservant man he was, to produce this brilliant little son, the possession of whom Isabel craved with a passion of need. She had seen the boy as a baby, twice a year since, and each time the sight of his little bird bones melted her own. He knew it, rewarded it with his unblinking stare.

‘You know what you do?' Isabel said to him as they wandered in the orchard, taking in the last of the light, giggling as they mashed dead apples underfoot. ‘You make me broody. Broody as an old hen.'

‘You look like a hen,' he volunteered. The maggots
in the apples fascinated him. He looked at everything gravely. ‘Are we staying here tonight?'

‘Yes, I hope so.'

‘I'll come in bed with you, then.'

‘Only if your mother says.'

Suddenly she liked the idea of her family. Blood was thicker than water. Robert and she would become friends. They would work out something for Mother. They would have civilized conversations about it, beginning now, this evening, when she would tell them Mother was mad, worsening fast, should not be living thus. She would ask Jack to stay. She would tell Robert what Mother had done to the food. It was simple: she would demand help and receive it. Not cover up any more.

‘Have you got a daddy, Bella?'

‘A daddy or a sugar daddy?' she teased.

He spread his thin arms. There was a blue vein on one wrist she always wanted to stroke. ‘A big man,' he said, as if that explained everything.

‘No, I haven't.' She thought of Joe whom she loved with such passion and who had not replied to her letters, and thought, no, he is a little man. So are they all, little men.

The orchard was a satisfying distance from the house. No sound reached it until Joan came out to join them. There was about her a smug, conspiratorial air that boded trouble. But Isabel decided she did not dislike her sister-in-law. There was not enough there: doors open, lights on, no one definite at home. A big
‘Halloo!' yelled into the peaceful air made her squirm but caused no reaction whatever in Jack. He was collecting maggots into a matchbox.

‘I say, Issy, there's a rather nice man, Andrew he said it was, called to see you. Brought some flowers for your mother. Said I'd come and find you. What have you got there, Jack, darling? Put them down.'

‘Andrew? Oh, yes.'

Joan propelled them back towards the house. It was dusk and the sandstone walls had taken on a life of their own, glowing like a soft beacon. Isabel faltered in her step, arrested by a shock of affection and appreciation, punctured when Joan took her arm like a jolly school friend on the way back from hockey, a gesture of the camaraderie Isabel had never found in the days when her mother wrote to her and Joan was captain of netball somewhere else.

‘He seems awfully keen, Isabel dear. He might have brought the flowers for you, but Serena took them, so I suppose they're hers, now.'

It seemed somehow obscene to explain in front of the boy that his granny had lost her love of plants and wanted her blooms to be
replicas,
unable to distinguish between the two except for the fact that one sort needed water and were a nuisance. Equally useless to explain to Robert that Granny would have limited interest in his baby; she preferred the durability of dolls. Joan squeezed Isabel's elbow.

‘Is this an old flame or a new one, Issy dear? Robbie says you had a lot of chaps around before you left
home. I mean, this one looks a bit old for you, I would have said, but very respectable.'

A lot of old flames, Isabel thought, even after I left with my inheritance. They all doused themselves, even the ones I brought home afterwards. First they were there, then they were gone. Have you got a big man, Issy? No, they all disappeared like smoke: I lived on my own. The sweet smell of rot in the orchard and the unwanted touch on her arm made memory part of a cycle. One in the dying phase, while fecund Joan was longing to impart the news of rebirth. The elbow was squeezed again, roguishly. The grin given with the squeeze was supposed to say, Come on, sister, you can tell me, while the school-prefect voice went on.

‘Well done, Issy, I say. Must be a bit lonely for you out here on your own. Glad you've got yourself sorted out so quickly. Got to get a man on board. Never at a loss in that direction are you?'

Issy, Bella. Each vision of her shortened name made her smaller, unless it was done with permission and affection. Patience in the face of unintended insult was something she was learning fast, so she kept her voice mild, mindful of the boy who was holding her hand.

‘That'll be Andrew Cornell. He's a valuer. I'm sure he's come to see Robert.'

Joan giggled girlishly. ‘I don't believe you,' she said.

They had traversed the lawn at the front quickly in response to the onset of darkness over dusk, no one noticing how weedy it was. Jack had his matchbox safely in his pocket. He sniffed the air like a dog.

‘Nice,' he announced. ‘Ever so nice here. Mum, why is Cathie screaming?'

‘What?'

‘Cathie. Screaming like that.'

Joan broke into a run.

W
hen George came back with the dog the kitchen was a nightmare of suppressed screams, the adults frozen in terror. There were dirty dishes in the sink and the overhead light illuminated a series of harsh faces. For a moment he could have been back in his hostel, waiting for a fight to happen. Only Serena's expression was blessed with contentment as she crooned to the baby in her arms, rocking it with rhythmic violence, squeezing it hard. Peripheral to this embrace was Robert, who was trying to unhinge her arms from round the baby's chest while Cathie bawled for redemption. They were the screams of distress from a child beyond pique and discomfort and well into the realms of hysteria, face flushed, choking on tears.

‘Let go!' Robert yelled at his mother. She grinned, squeezed harder, raising bruises, hummed louder and moved her burden in the direction of the corridor. He had visions of the child's ribs popping out through her ample flesh, her cries dying away into a series of gurgles, then silence. Two doll-like arms beat at Serena's face; the thick, frail neck wobbled dangerously; the china-blue eyes formed slits and the two fat legs hung out of the bundle like helpless sausages with feet. The little boy laughed to see such fun: Jack was
beside himself, yelping. Robert was desperate. Tears had formed in his eyes. He balled his right hand into a fist.

‘Dance for your daddy …' Serena crooned.

‘Put her down! I'll kill you!' Joan's voice was hoarse with threat.

Serena took no notice. The baby's screams descended to a steady howl of pain.

Andrew appeared from nowhere, the last visible person, pushed Robert to one side.

‘You look lovely today, Mrs Burley. Where did you get that hat? Isn't it noisy? Shall I carry this for you? It is very, very heavy, isn't it?' He spoke loudly and firmly, kissed her on the left wrist, held out his arms beneath the child.

Jack's laughter fell into silence as his mother slapped him. The fridge hummed. They all watched. Mrs Burley smiled more widely than ever. Her arms opened with such abruptness that Andrew's thin back bowed under the weight of Robert Burley's daughter. George was behind him. Andrew passed on the bundle of flesh, bones and shawls with practised tenderness. George hoisted Cathie over his shoulder, holding her under the nappy, letting her fingers claw at his eyes, bending back so she lay on a curve, free as a bird. Murmuring, My aren't you a beauty? Aren't you just a little beauty? The crying descended into a series of hiccups. The women recovered from paralysis. Robert moved.

‘I should let her stop here a minute if I were you,'
George said amiably. ‘She's just filled her nappy. That's what all that fuss was about. What a treasure. Is she yours? What's her name?'

T
hey packed the Ford Sierra and had left within the hour. George had gone before them. Robert said he was not staying in a house where his child was not safe; he would not believe that his mother had simply forgotten how to hold a baby. Enough was enough. Serena was Isabel's responsibility. He would be consultant.

Serena had no idea what she had done. How silly people were. She cried when Robert left, but he could not bear to touch her. She turned on Isabel a face of puzzled desolation.

‘Why doesn't he love me?' she asked.

‘He does, Mum. He does, of course he does. We all do.'

L
ater, when all the dishes were done and the place restored to tidiness, Isabel saw the ferret, waiting outside the door.

3.30 in the morning

‘I
T IS NICE AND WARM TONIGHT,'
Serena wrote in block capitals. Writing in capitals took up so much time she began to scribble. ‘Someone stole my doll. Someone stole my man. I can't remember which was worse.'Sitting on the big carver chair watching the moon from the window reminded her how these clearer spells were becoming briefer, since she had obviously been en route to another place entirely in order to do something different and useful. She sat upright and considered the problem.

She had been looking for snow to fall, snow being an easier option than a knife, but it was too early for that. Or she might have been looking for a book to read. Or, more likely, she had realized that Isabel had heard her tiptoeing downstairs, and that was enough to suspend all movement. It was awful to be followed, terrible to be captive in her own house, and purgatory to have some other woman dancing attendance. Any female with sense, Serena announced with her breath reaching the table, hates the dominance of her mother, but not nearly as much as the other way round.