The Ballroom Class (2 page)

The sprung floor was donated by Lady Eliza Cartwright, for whom Angelica’s great-aunt Martha had cooked. Lady Eliza’s husband, Sir Cedric, had been a keen Scottish reeler who even reeled with staff at Christmas parties, but he was killed on the first day of Ypres, and Lady Eliza, widowed with three young girls, ‘turned white overnight’, as Martha liked to recall gloomily, when she’d had a sherry or two. She sold his handmade shotguns, gave the money to the fund, and threw herself into leading the committee of widowed volunteers, stumbling through their grief with over-busy diaries. Lady Cartwright was one of the dancing ladies in the subscription stained-glass window right by the door, her blonde hair flying as she swung round as the mother of the Three Muses, with little Clementine, Ada and Felicity making up the foursome. She was still there eighty years later, her pale arms entwined with her children’s.

Angelica stepped across the floor to gaze up at the Cartwrights. They were still exactly as she remembered, though now dulled by age and dust and old smoke. She had used Ada’s right foot when she was learning to pirouette, concentrating on it, spinning, then catching it again with her eyes for balance. In a way, it made her feel as if Ada was joining in the lesson, despite the fact that ‘that poor scrap of a girl’ (Martha again) died in the flu epidemic in 1919, up in St Mary’s hospital, when the windows were still sketches on the draughtsman’s board.

Through the twenties and early thirties, the widows and their daughters had had to dance together in the new hall, and for a while there’d been a vogue for ceilidhs, because it wasn’t so bad to take the man’s part in a dance that was more breathless exercise than romance. But as the sons grew tall enough to dance with, proper ballroom nights had started up again, and the glitterball, imported specially from Europe, sparkled over foxtrots and bustling quicksteps, especially when the smooth-talking GIs arrived at the base down the road during the next war.

Then at the end of the fifties – and Angelica remembered this herself, partly from her father’s absolute horror – rock’n’roll filled the hall three nights a week, jostling for position with the die-hard ballroomers for alternate Friday nights.

Longhampton’s deep-rooted passion for a swinging beat took a long time to wither; even when punk was raging in London, couples still trailed to the Memorial Hall in their C&A best to
fleckerl
and
chassé
of a Friday night. Fashion took so long to spread to the middle of nowhere, and there wasn’t that much else to do. Angelica was long gone by then, but Pauline wrote to her to tell her about the success the formation team were having locally, and how sequence dancing was all the rage again. It seemed like another life to Angelica, star of the professional ballroom, stepping out on pol ished floors all over the world, under the red and gold rococo splendour of the Tower Ballroom, Blackpool, in cruise-ship lounges and night-club stages, spangled and glittering like a Fab ergé peacock, transformed into someone else as the music began.

In those days, when anyone asked, Angelica usually said she was from London. And in a sense, that’s where Angelica
was
from. That’s where she became Angelica, shrugging off provincial Angela’s past like an old dress. Who wanted to know about Longhampton? She certainly didn’t.

Now she was back, though, Angelica wasn’t so sure she could shrug things off so easily any more. Scanning the local paper one evening, in her mother’s quiet, empty house, she saw there was a social dance night two or three times a month, on a Friday. She guessed
Strictly Come Dancing
was to thank for that. Of course, she’d gone along to the social – how could she resist? – and it was surprising, given that no one was offering lessons, that the dancers there were so good, even by Angelica’s standards. Not competition standard, obviously, but that lovely proficient amateur level where you could have a chat and a dance and not worry about getting your toes mangled. The older generation, of course, not many youngsters.

You’re older generation now, she reminded herself, with a wry smile. Nearly bus-pass age.

Angelica could think that, because she knew she didn’t look it. Not by a long way.

Once you started dancing, you always wanted to improve, she knew from experience, so she’d put up her own advert for lessons, ballroom and Latin, teaching in the very same hall where she’d learned to tap and
pli
é
herself, a little black crow in the line of chubby-legged Longhampton girls.

And here she was. The first lesson tomorrow.

Angelica took a broom and swept the dust off the wooden floor, smiling to herself as she remembered that gorgeous younger Angelica, all slicked-back hair, and false Dusty Springfield eyelashes. How horrified she’d be to think of herself back here, offering a dancing class to complete beginners, of all things, when she could be enjoying her alimony in Islington. Teaching people who didn’t even know she’d spent the best part of twenty years as half of one of Britain’s top professional couples. People who didn’t even remember
Come Dancing
, let alone her magnificent regular appearances on it, making the Tower Ballroom crackle with applause as she and Tony swept and glided like swallows in sequins.

She shrugged and swept, stepping backwards in an unconscious lock step, her feet crossing neatly in their red shoes, trying not to let herself slip into the tempting showreel of Tony memories.

Angelica paused at the stained-glass representation of a matron less picturesque than Lady Cartwright. Poor Mrs Dollis Fairley had always seemed wrapped in bandages rather than draped in Grecian garb – the Mummy, as they’d joked in tap class. Now Angelica was surprised to feel a flash of sympathy for her. For her heavy sadness.

She was offering a class for the same reason she’d come back to Sydney Street in the first place. Now that Mum was buried next to Dad in the bleak cemetery on the outskirts of the town, there was no real reason to come back, and yet there was part of herself in Longhampton, part of her past that she’d never quite squared up to, and now she couldn’t put it off. It wasn’t to clear out her mother’s terraced house herself – she knew she could have got movers in to do that – it was to make up for all the years of running away.

Besides, Angelica liked teaching, especially now she’d mellowed a bit. It was hard to deal with incompetent learners, and she wouldn’t put up with students who didn’t listen, or practise, or look for some starry-eyed glamour in themselves, but she enjoyed seeing that moment when the steps clicked in their heads, and a couple discovered they were wound into the music, moving together without thinking.

After all, music was music – it had the same magic here as it did in the ballroom at the Ritz. The moment when suddenly lightened feet moved by themselves, and the dance and the music and the moment launched you round the floor like a boat’s sails catching the wind – that was lovely to see. It was almost more rewarding to watch beginners transform and improve under her instruction, than it was coaching the snappy, competitive pros she’d been teaching in London these past few years.

When she could be bothered. It had got harder and harder lately.

Angelica propped the broom against the ancient radiator. That was another thing the old Angelica wouldn’t have believed – that the desire to dance might eventually leave her, and it would have nothing to do with her bad neck. It was her heart that seemed to have lost its bounce, not her stiff knees. And Angelica hated going through the motions. She sighed, and told herself that the only thing worse than having a chequered past was not having a past at all.

Then she closed her eyes, hummed the first bars of ‘Let’s Face the Music and Dance’, and began to quickstep smoothly around the hall, her feet moving with a swift sure grace, her arms poised weightlessly, one on an imaginary shoulder, the other held high in the air as her head leaned elegantly first to the left, then swayed, as she paused, suspended like a feather in the air, to the right.

And though Angelica started, in her imagination, with Bernard, by the second verse Tony, as always, had cut in and her steps took on a sleeker line.

1

‘. . .  Seventeen, we agreed when I went back to work that Ross would get the kids bathed and in their pyjamas by the time I got home, so we could both put them to bed, but nine times out of ten, they’re still running around, which I think is unfair because it means I end up having to take charge and be the mean shouty parent, even before I’ve got my coat off. Eighteen, he never ever cleans the bath. I know that seems petty, but it means I have to clean it before I can get in, and I’m knackered most evenings. Nineteen, he makes me feel like his mother, or his sister, but definitely not his wife.’

Silence.

Katie looked up from her notebook. That last one might have been a bit much. ‘Though his legs aren’t bad for a man who doesn’t go to the gym,’ she conceded.

Ross and the marriage guidance counsellor were slumped in their chairs, not responding, and she felt an unwelcome flicker of frustration, the sort she got when her team weren’t on the ball at work. Katie hated herself for feeling it, but then again, if she stopped feeling annoyed at Ross’s chronic passivity, she’d start feeling mortified about being here in the first place.

Before she could rein it back in, she heard her own voice snap, ‘Look, we’re here to get things thrashed out, aren’t we? You told us to write a list of the things that weren’t working, didn’t you?’

‘A
list
,’ muttered Ross. ‘Not a bloody
novel
.’

Peter, the counsellor, shook himself. ‘Well, yes, it’s good to get everything out in the open. But now let’s have your
positive
list about what makes you
happy
in your marriage.’

Katie turned the page, and swallowed. ‘One, Ross is a great dad. Two, we’ve got a nice house. Three  . . .’ She turned the notebook nearer her so Ross couldn’t see she’d only managed to put three things on her list. He’d gazed at her with his puppy-dog eyes when she’d said he was a great dad – which, to be fair, he was – and he might as well have stabbed her. She wished he
would
sometimes. Anything but the wishy-washy predictability that was turning their marriage into a bickering brother–sister arrangement.

Katie Parkinson didn’t know what made her happy in her marriage any more. She’d worked hard to get everything she thought she needed for a contented life – decent, faithful, good-looking man, three-bed house with off-road parking, job within a shortish drive of said nice house, two beautiful children – and everyone seemed to be happy except her. She’d pinned her hopes on the therapist diagnosing what exactly was wrong, then fixing it (or confirming it was unfixable), but so far, all he’d done was nod annoyingly while the pair of them squirmed.

Ross looked over at her. ‘Is that it?’

‘Three,’ she went on, playing her final card, ‘we have two wonderful children. They make me happy.’

He nodded his agreement, eager as ever to please.

He reminds me of a spaniel, thought Katie, wishing he still reminded her of a bloke. A floppy-eared, soppy, chocolate spaniel with big feet.

‘We do,’ he was saying to Peter. ‘Jack’s just two and Hannah’s four, and they’re both wonderful kids. Bright, friendly, really loving and happy.’

‘Which he’s implying I don’t notice, because I’m working full-time, but I do,’ said Katie, unable to resist. Stop being such a
cow
. ‘Um, four,’ she improvised quickly, to compensate, ‘Ross has done a lovely job on the garden. We’re thinking of getting a conservatory if I get promoted this year. I mean, there are some advantages to those
anti-socially long hours
I work in a planning department, Ross – I do know about building work applications!’

She meant it as a joke, but it came out more barbed than she intended.

Ross and Peter didn’t smile. Now she slumped into the hard plastic chair.

There are no problems, only solutions, Katie told herself. It had always been her mantra at work. For the first time in years, she was starting to wonder if it might not be entirely true.

‘Ross?’ said Peter, turning his kind face towards her husband. ‘Why don’t you read your list? Why not start with the positives this time?’

Ross shot Katie a dark-eyed look and got out a sheaf of paper. ‘OK. We’ve made the best out of a tricky situation, considering – when the kids were born we did the sums and childcare was going to cost more than I was earning.’ He looked up at Peter. ‘I’m a graphic designer. I work on contract, and I was doing pretty well, but, you know how much daycare costs these days. Katie’s job had better prospects and she earns twice what I did  . . .’

When you could be bothered to go out and
get
contracts, thought Katie, though this time she managed to stop herself saying it.

‘. . .  so it made sense for me to stop at home. I think it takes a strong marriage to cope with a role-reversal like that, but it’s working out. Well, as far as I’m concerned, anyway,’ he added, with a resentful shrug. ‘And the kids seem happy.’

‘No, it’s
not
working, Ross! Why else would we be here?’ protested Katie. Ross was such an
ostrich
. ‘It might be working for the children, but it’s not working for
us
. You can’t just ignore the fact that we only talk about the school run or what bills need paying! And as for  . . .’