I Hope You Dance (29 page)

David was back. I could feel it in my bones. The atmosphere had shifted. I felt restless, scatter-brained. The crocuses under the wreck of the willow tree were blossoming; the branches above that had escaped the fire sprouted tiny, fisted-up leaves, reminding me of baby Hope.

My mother's daughter, I busied myself with work and motherhood and nail biting and stomach clenching and smacking myself about the head in frustration at my deep and desperate feelings.

I found him sitting on the kerb at the bottom of my drive when I returned home from work one Tuesday evening. His hair was lighter, and long again, the beginnings of a beard emphasizing his exquisite jaw-line. He wore a grey-blue cotton sweater, with the sleeves pushed up above his elbows. Even his forearms were gorgeous.

“Hey, Ruth.”

“Hi.” I paused, unable to meet his smiling eyes.

“Want to join me?”

My shoulders sagged. I closed my eyes momentarily, and when I opened them again, prepared to speak, David had risen to stand beside me.

“Did you get my postcard?”

“Yes.” I flicked my gaze to the house, hoping Maggie wasn't watching.

“And?”

“And. And nothing, David. Nothing's changed. Please stop pressuring me.”

He nodded. “Okay. Sorry, no pressure. I'll behave myself. And try to be content with us being friends. For now.” He grinned, and it cut through me like a scalpel.

I shook my head tightly. “I can't. I'm sorry.”

He pulled his head back – the grin had vanished. “You can't be friends? Why not?”

“Maggie found the postcard. Right before the anniversary of the car crash. She didn't take it well. I'm sorry.”

“So she decides who you can be friends with as well as your love life?”

“No! It's not like that. But you have to see she wouldn't want me hanging around with someone who's got feelings for me. She'd be constantly wondering what's really going on.”

“Doesn't she trust you?”

“Yes, but –”

“But what? You can't have a male friend in case he finds you attractive? What about Matt or my dad? There are a lot of men in this world who probably find you attractive, Ruth, but, unbelievably, can actually manage to control themselves.”

“It's not that!”

“What, then? Why are you letting her decide who your friends are, instead of asking her to trust you?”

“Because I don't trust me!” I turned away, angry and riddled with pain. “
I don't trust me to be friends with you, David!
” I lowered my voice, aware that we were standing in the open. “And, quite frankly, it hurts too much to think about you, let alone spend time with you. Can you imagine how much it kills me to know I never loved Maggie's dad as I should have – as she and he deserved – because my heart was still stuck with you under that willow tree? I gave Maggie a pathetic, sub-standard, lifeless example of what it is to love a man, because the only way to stop thinking about you
every hour of every day
was to stop thinking altogether. I was half
mad with love for you, David. Reckless. Foolish.
Untrustworthy.
But I blew it. We blew it. And life happened anyway. I made a promise to my daughter, and the only way I can be certain I keep that is to stay away.”

David stared at me, his body completely still.

I tried to pull myself together, to get out what I needed to say.

“So, I'm asking you, please don't call round, or send letters, or wait for me to come home from work. Don't wait for me at all.”

“Ruth –” He reached one hand out towards me, and I did the only thing I could do. I ran away from David Carrington for the second time – not as far, but an ocean, a desert, a galaxy away nevertheless.

Three days later, he flouted my request, and was once again sitting on the pavement outside my house when I came home. I pretended to ignore him, as I had been trying to ignore the gaping wound in my chest, and strode past him up the drive.

“I've been offered another job. With an open-ended contract. The producers want to make
Whole Wild World
into a show marketed for adults as well as kids. It'll mean staying away indefinitely.”

I paused by the front door, half turned away, head down.

“Last week I told them I wasn't interested. I had no reason to leave Southwell and a very good reason to stay. But they called again, made me a better offer.” I heard him moving closer. “So. If there is even the slightest shred of hope, the tiniest chance, that I may still have that reason, that things might change, just say the word and I'll turn it down. Is there any reason at all I should stay?”

My heart hammered in my chest, pounding out the reason with every beat. All the moisture had left my mouth, but my voice sounded loud and clear as I replied, “I think you should take the job.”

I got all the way up the stairs and into my room, closed the door and shattered into a million pieces.

By the time the rest of the family returned home, I had stuck myself back together again. Cracked, probably a little bit wonky, but without looking closely it would be hard to tell the difference.

Thankfully, talk at the dinner table was all about the dance classes. Maggie was keen to book a date for the big party, to get things moving. My parents, those pinnacles of perfection, shuddered at the prospect of releasing their fledgling dancers on the general public. Hannah still hadn't even got out of her chair to try the warm-up. Maggie, smirking at me over her stir-fry, had a whale of a time listening to her grandparents united in their views for once.

Things had temporarily plateaued regarding the state of their relationship. Yes, Dad had cut down the number of U3A groups he attended to two or three a week, and as far as we knew he hadn't seen Ruby again on a social basis. Mum had also kept her promise to slow down her rescue-the-downtrodden-of Southwell campaign, and consequently they brushed shoulders from time to time in the house, as well as at the dance class. But. It was a mere peephole in the towering wall between them; the barricade still stood strong. The wild, deep-spirited, beautiful lovers they had once been – bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh – remained elusive. Maggie and I, my sisters, their oldest and wisest friends suggested counselling, a second honeymoon, date-nights; at the very least a good long hard conversation or a bunch of flowers.

But so far, pride won out, the path of least resistance beckoned, and Ruby hovered hopefully in the wings.

The Oak Hill administrator – Ms Ruth Henderson – found a convenient space in the diary for the tea dance during the first week in July. Did the fact that the date coincided with her parents' forty-ninth wedding anniversary have anything to do with the availability of the hall? Absolutely.

When I told her at dinner that evening, Maggie was thrilled. “I've been thinking. We need to liven things up a bit. Make it more exciting. Up the ante. Give the dance class something to work for.”

The colour drained from Dad's face. He paused, a forkful of rice halfway to his mouth. “Please no. Not a show. Not this lot. It'd take decades to get them up to show standards.”

“No. Even better. A competition.”

Mum threw her arms up in the air, accidentally hurling a chunk of naan bread over one shoulder in alarm. “Compete for what? The creakiest knees? Slowest turn about the floor? How do you expect the geriatric members of the class to stand a chance against your hoody-clad compadres?”

Maggie smiled. “I don't. That's the whole point. They aren't going to be competing
against
each other. But on the same team. An intergenerational dance competition. One member of each couple has to be at least fifty years older than their partner.”

“
Fifty?”

“All right. Thirty.”

Dad frowned, thoughtfully. “Twenty-five. That's more like a generation. Do you really think your friends are going to want to dance with the older lot?”

“Depends who it is. And what prize is at stake. And if we can stir up some competition between them, they'll end up fighting for the best biddies.”

“They might not appreciate being called biddies.” I tried to hide my smile, waiting for my parents to explain to Maggie the foolishness of her idea. But those two loved a competition. And then Maggie made one final suggestion and the deal was sealed.

“I thought I'd dance with you, Pop. If you think I'm good enough.”

Dad widened his eyes in surprise. A smile broke out across his face that was so broad I worried his jaw would dislocate. He suddenly appeared to have something in his eye. Both eyes.

“That… Well. You would be perfect.”

I ignored the stab of pain: something like jealously, something like rejection. It wasn't as though I wanted to dance with him, was it?

 

I plodded through most of April, enjoying my job, getting to know a few new people, feeling more comfortable with those I already knew. I stuck a bandage over the big hole in my heart, and counted my blessings.

Three women from Oak Hill phoned. They had seen Hope's
Noah's ark picture. Could I do one for their niece/granddaughter/son, only with a zebra/giraffe/slow loris? I could. I named each boat the name of the child it was for. Someone asked if I could draw a barge instead of a boat, as her best friend was moving into a house boat. I did, changing the messages accordingly. It all went into my new house fund.

The shadow of Carl receded enough for me to start striding my new, decidedly un-stick-like body along the footpaths that meandered their way through the fields surrounding Southwell. I avoided my childhood haunts – the places David and I would hunt out wildlife in reed-rimmed ponds and murky thickets – instead choosing busier routes through the strawberry fields, along the edge of the golf course or down winding lanes lined with trees dripping with blossom.

I walked and looked and listened to the abundance of life buzzing and bleating and barking all around me, losing myself in the pattern of lichen upon a tree stump, or the dance of a dragonfly, or the smell of a bluebell carpet, heady and lush with the promise of summer. I felt alive, like Sleeping Beauty awoken after a hundred years of slumbering. And glad to be so.

One Sunday afternoon, I climbed the rickety stepladder up to the attic. Digging through the cobwebs and tickly layers of dust and grime, I found a wooden crate. Jimmying the lid off with one of Dad's screwdrivers, I gazed at the contents with unbridled delight. A carefully ordered, perfectly sharpened set of drawing pencils, three varying sized sketchbooks – a little less crisp than they were, but still useable. A slightly bashed-in tin of charcoal, miniature easel and a clipboard for leaning on in awkward positions (like under a bush, or balancing on a bouncy tree branch). A set of pastels, the green and brown worn down to stubs, and a wooden box, about eight inches square, containing watercolour paint tubes, brushes and a mixing palette. I carefully lifted out the pencils, the smallest sketchbook and clipboard, bashing the box lid back into place before clambering back down onto the landing.

I packed the equipment into a rucksack, along with a picnic blanket, bottle of water and bag of apples, and dug out Mum's straw hat. Maggie found me fiddling with the angle of the brim in the cloakroom mirror.

“Nice hat.”

“Thanks. It's Nanny's.”

“I was joking. You look embarrassing.”

“You're fourteen – I always look embarrassing. In about five years' time, that will miraculously change. It's a law of nature.”

“Where are you going?”

“Out into the middle of nowhere, where my terrible taste in headwear can't offend anybody.”

“Irritating! Can you answer my question?”

“I'm going to a tiny clearing in the woods about a mile down the old railway line. I may be some time.”

“What?”

“There's the most incredible cluster of wood anemone. I'm going to draw it.”

“Have you got your phone?” Maggie frowned.

“Yes.”

“Is there a decent reception out there?”

“Yes. Reception, and dog walkers, and ramblers, and kids racing up and down on bikes. I'll be fine. If I see a creepy ex-doctor with weird, toilet cleaner coloured eyes, I'll make a run for it.”

“It's not funny, Mum.”

“No. He is not funny. But what's even less funny is letting him control where I go and what I do, and making me afraid to walk in the countryside where I spent about ninety per cent of my childhood. I refuse to allow him any power over me. He's gone.”

If I said it enough, it might even be true. I left her working on some maths revision with Dad, and hiked along the trail, pushing myself hard until I outran the grey shadow of foreboding that Maggie's anxiety had cast.

The rest of the afternoon was bliss. Me, the occasional passer-by,
the gentle scratch of graphite on thick, lovely paper and the rich splendour of creation: birds, butterflies, two rabbits and glorious spring sunshine. The pencils settled in my fingers like old friends. My hand flowed over the paper. I stayed until the light began to dim, whole and happy. And for those precious hours, the sharp, empty ache inside lessened a little, the air in my lungs found enough room, my head cleared and my spirit sat at peace.

Five days later, on my way to work, humming the latest tune from Maggie's favourite band, I saw a black car creeping down one of the side-streets.

It's nothing. There are tons of black cars in Southwell. It's moving slowly because it's looking for a house number.

I shot my eyes forward, away from the street, picked up my pace and tried to shut off the siren clanging in my ears. A discreet enquiry later on reassured me that Dorothy, still confused and in partial denial, had heard nothing from her son.

I didn't feel like walking that weekend. I drew the fat, drunken bees clambering over the honeysuckle in the garden instead.