Let's Dance (3 page)

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.'

T
he 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.

A
nd 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

T
he 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 recorder 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.

God was an arsehole.

Hari-kari, whoever he was, had no fucking business in a kitchen; she would be deafened by the whimpering for a start, herself, the dog or the cat, made no difference. Back upstairs then, colder and colder, the cat in her arms. Although she protested, cat had cold steel against her throat. Nothing could be colder than her feet. Serena spoke softly to Ginger, explaining that this was not selfish; it was
just too bad she was needed for practice. Serena had always loved cats, admiring the way they refused to heed a single social obligation, but, all the same, something had to die first to make sure she got it right.

She nodded, regally, at the grandfather clock on the way upstairs.

B
ack on her couch, concentration failed while she wondered what to relinquish in order to get the full use of her hands. Fur or knife, knife or fur, find the slippers, get feet warm, don't let go of anything, although the wretch wailed, knowing she wanted her throat. Cats were always feminine, to Serena's mind, regardless of sex. Females should be stoical about life as well as death.

And then she coughed, big, explosive spasms, out of control, too many cigarettes, too much age, and the knife lunged into the pillow and Ginger was off like greased lightning. She howled, shook her fist, but the cat stayed on top of the wardrobe, licking to get rid of the taste of Serena, just like everyone else did. Look, she said, we were in this together. The cat had no imagination.

‘No bollocks!' she yelled.

Bums, cunts and bums. Fucking bums.

Back to the writing-paper then, restless.

There was another thing to do with the knife. She would stick it right up her private bits, turn it round and round and round, dig it in. Killing herself this way might be no worse than a big bleed and certainly better than having a baby. That was tomorrow's plan, then: she would get ice from downstairs; something to put on top and dull the
pain while she bled away slowly from below. Three hours at least before anyone would find her, six if she said she was tired, and by then half her vital fluids would be in the mattress.

Tomorrow, promise?

First she wanted to tell them, so that when they found her she could point to the paper. The sounds she made these days were so ugly. Dawn edged prettily round the window with the promise of a fine October day. She wrote busily.

Fucking bloody arseholes, fucking cunts. Bums, bums, bums. It's all on that paper, there; her whole life history on the paper which she put under the pillow for transferring to the desk.

She even told them how dawn had looked before another day of horror.

Grey, colour, shot with light, streaked with excrement.

Curious.

I
sabel Burley began most conversations by saying she was sorry. It was not always clear why, but she was usually in a state of apology about something. She was thirty-three years old and honed into fitness and a slenderness she wore well without anyone remarking how extreme it was. The joints were too big for the body: experts would notice a closet anorexia; the rest were either bewitched or bewildered by the long legs, ballerina features and gauche lack of grace, as if life had frozen her adolescent years into the stance of either a frightened gazelle or a clumsy foal. She had a nervous laugh and was widely perceived as reliable, if stupid. If she turned up for an appointment damp, breathless and late, she still turned up without fail. Poor little semi-rich girl, sometime aerobics teacher, sometime cosmetics saleswoman, sometime student, victim to her own good looks, her own incessant concern about them and a constant anxiety to please. There was more than an element of the dizzy blonde,
except she was dark. Whenever she passed a mirror, she checked her long hair.