Let's Dance (11 page)

There was fucking dust on this buggering table, which was nicer than paper, and the light of the moon was preferable to bursting lightbulbs, which blew up in her face out of sheer spite. She watched her own finger waver, hesitant to commit. Something was important. Nothing she could
remember. Serena got up and made her regular parade of touching things, as if she loved them. She had never had much time for things, only people. Edward, her husband, had loved things like trophies. She had loved him first as long as he loved her first; she had loved other men second. There was about as much time left for women as there was for God. Neither had ever saved her from anything.

She looked at her fingers. Still five of them. What a relief. Nothing really changed, then. She did not change. Bits of her died was all, like gangrenous toes on bodies in frost. All those lovely manners, which had covered her like a coat. It was not the same as being mad, Serena told the table: she could still dance, still march to a different tune. As for being good, she was not good, never had been.

She added an extra
‘
s
'
to the word in the dust, so that the sound of it would end in a hiss. Lonelinessssss was a fact of life sometimes cured by illusion, mitigated by the love of a man. For some women, she wrote, being alone on the planet is cured by the love they have for their children. She had loved hers, but never to death and never as a replacement. Mab had loved them as if they were her own.

Serena stopped, shaking her head until her eyes rattled like marbles. Why should it be so difficult for children to accept they were not the centre of the world? Why on earth impose such expectation? Serena put her mind to the task of communication. A game of noughts and crosses which
must
not be wiped away in the morning. In case somebody won.

She was playing a game with Isabel. First she kept winning when Isabel was small, but then when Is grew into a
girl, she wiped the board, stole her father's heart and got row after row of kisses until her mother had nothing left. Not that Edward ever
did
anything: he hadn't the faintest idea, but that was not the point. The point was the row of Xs. The memory of being insanely jealous. And now this same child was demanding love. ‘Give us a break,' Serena scrawled. She could not remember what she had done the day before. Something bad. Her eyes widened.

Look at that! The cat was on the table, smearing the writing. All because she had opened the window on account of hating anything to be locked. The bastard cat had brought her a mouse without a head. That was what lack of inhibition was all about.

Balls.

A
ndrew was dreaming.

‘Hush,' someone told him. ‘Hush. Whisper who dares. Christopher Robin has fallen downstairs.'

He and Isabel were sitting at either end of that big Knole sofa (worth a few hundred, bad condition), avoiding the springs and talking to each other. They were both a little drunk, which eased the talk and made it slip and slide between things that mattered a lot and things that had no importance whatever.

Listen to me. Listen. It is no person's duty to look after a parent. I should know.

My mother loves me.

Yes. Like a fungus loves its culture.

No. I want to be like her.

At that point Serena crashed through the door, wearing nothing but curlers and demanding a car.

Tell me, Miss Burley, were you in love with what she was? Why did you leave me? Why did you write me that filthy letter?

When Andrew woke, he was on his own bed, fully dressed, with everything crumpled and uncomfortable. He could feel the weight of a baby in his arms.

D
r Reilly puffed towards the back door. For country calls he wore boots, which gave a certain edge to the challenge of controlling the pedals of the Volvo. At midday the air was fresh with rain, the temperature mild with only a hint of winter warning. Bonfire night: he could smell the smoke in advance, knew he would need his energy and his sobriety for later alarms.

He took off his boots at the door, revealing fisherman's socks of odd colours. Those made Isabel trust him, although she knew he was a wily old bird: Aunt Mab had said so, and what Mab said was always right, although none of her observations meant that the Doc was anything less than an excellent practitioner. He seemed to be the same age now as he had always been, which was old enough to treat as a reliable uncle.

‘Anything in particular wrong, m'dear? You said on the phone you wanted me to take a look at your mother. I'd been popping out every week to see her, y'know. George would have called me if there was anything wrong. Anyway, after you took charge I've waited to be asked.'

Looking at the girl he wondered which of the two female occupants needed treatment. She was a funny grey colour: those great deep eyes of hers seemed to take up as much of her head as a bush baby's, but her smile still went straight from ear to ear. A mouth like
Brigitte Bardot; no wonder his son had suffered such a bad dose of calf love once. In his eyes Isabel had improved with age: most women did. His son had two daughters of his own now: the photographs were in the doctor's pocket, ready to be shown.

‘It's just a check-up. I don't know. Just to give me some idea of how she really is.'

‘Surely,' he said kindly. ‘Does she still smoke?'

‘Yes. Not very often. She seems to forget how to hold it.'

‘Well, there's a mercy. No need to come with me. I know the way if she's still in bed. And then we'll have a chat.'

Half an hour later, on her way to the bathroom, Isabel heard the sound of laughter from Mother's room and felt a spurt of envy for Doc Reilly. She had never had it in herself to make her mother laugh, she wanted to snap at him when he sat himself down so solidly at the kitchen table in front of a cup of coffee, but then he smiled and patted her shoulder.

‘You've chosen a lonely path to furrow, miss. Don't worry about your mum chortling. Your mother never did mind being examined. She says it makes her tickle. The stethoscope, I mean. She likes it.'

Isabel felt ashamed. ‘Can I tell you something?'

‘Course. Anything.'

She hesitated. ‘Sometimes I want to hit her. My fingers itch to hit her.'

‘I don't blame you. I'm amazed more people don't succumb. I don't even know why it's considered worse
to hit an old child than a child.' He laughed. It was not the laugh she had heard from the bedroom: that had been Serena's.

Isabel placed her palms flat down on the table. He noticed the prominent bones at the wrists. Then she clasped her hands between her knees, as if wanting to hide the evidence of temptation.

‘I could do with some help, I suppose,' she added, lamely.

He frowned. ‘Well, to be honest, there's not much of that to be had unless you hire it and I doubt they'd come out this far. You've got two options. You can carry on, or you can abandon ship and leave her to it.'

He gulped the coffee as if his mouth had forgotten the difference between cold and hot.

‘Once there's another fire, or the place gets infested, but not before, the Social Services will step in. They'll pretend they have a budget for so-called care in the community, people coming in every day for an hour, you know, but it wouldn't work. They can't afford people staying overnight. It would stagger on for a bit, and then, provided you kept your distance, they'd take her away. There's a nice home in—'

‘No,' said Isabel. ‘I couldn't consign her to that. She'd lose whatever it is she has left.'

‘She won't go any other way than in a straitjacket,' he said roughly. ‘And she'll be what they call difficult to place. I don't want to point out to you that there would be a lot more help available if you simply didn't exist. Didn't she tell you about the home helps she
sent away? No, she wouldn't, would she? Janice was the only one she could stand, perhaps because she paid Janice herself. You could perhaps get her back.'

‘She won't.'

The Doc shook a grizzly head. He hated this kind of problem, couldn't believe the contrast between fact and expectation. Nor could he believe any planner could have imagined care in the community was any kind of cheap option. Speaking for himself, he had no plans to quit drinking or smoking. Once he retired, he would look for other, carcinogenic things to do.

‘The only thing I can tell you, if you don't already know, is that Social Services have a legal duty to your mother. They have. You do not. Odd though that may seem. But they won't do a single thing about that duty as long as someone else is exercising it, see? You
do
have a choice.'

She nodded.

The Doc drained his cup and rose. ‘Shout for me any time you want,' he said. ‘Good coffee. Get out and about more, I would. Now, will you do me a favour? Show me that living room of yours. I used to love that room, had some good times in there. They were great party-givers, your mum and dad.'

‘Would she be able to cope if we had a party now?'

Doc Reilly broke his stride across the kitchen floor. ‘I doubt it.'

He did not add that he knew of no one who would come voluntarily, and that you couldn't dragoon people to a party. Not even his sainted wife, who had
visited longer than most and whom Serena had called a pig, would come. You had to have a big heart to let an old lady get her rocks off by insulting you.

He strode to the west-facing window, looked into the rain-streaked garden, wanting to get his hands on it. Shrubs needed pruning, lawn was like a shrinking hayfield. A movement caught his eye: two sets of twinkling training shoes disappearing round the side of the house. In the distance he heard a door bang shut.

‘Do you get many kids coming up here?' he asked sharply.

‘Yes, sometimes, asking for water, apples, that kind of thing.'

The doctor moved swiftly. Back in the kitchen Isabel's handbag was open on the table, undisturbed. Outside the door of his car stood open.

‘They don't want water,' he snorted. ‘They want cash.'

All his loose change, in the glove compartment for parking, was gone. No sign of them down the road. Too cunning by far to let themselves be framed in the lights of the Volvo over the field; too swift for someone who had to pull on his boots. The Doc turned on to the road at the end of the track, purple with irritation. Could have been Serena's purse they robbed, had probably done already, sodding little truants. He could hear them now, explaining it all: ‘We didn't take it, Mister. She gave it to us, honest.' He would take a bet that Serena Burley's house was not as well stocked with small objects as it had been a
year ago. These were sparrows, gathering to lead in the birds of prey.

There was a white van parked in the place by the graveyard, with windows slightly steamed up and two men inside, drinking their lunchtime tea. The Doc did not notice them. Thought instead of buzzards, hovering in a bleak sky and the way Serena's body had moved in the days when they had danced.

G
eorge manoeuvred his old car between the holes in the waterlogged track, spirits lifting in direct proportion to his distance from the town. Beginning as it did at rock bottom today, his mood had a long way to go before it reached buoyancy. He called at Sal's house, just to say hallo, received from her a piece of cake and the day's letters. The mere sight of letters made George squirm: he had never again acted as postman for the Burley household's outgoing letters: let Isabel take those. But the postman still left the incoming post with the neighbours. Nice, willing people they were, but the letters which he dropped on the sideboard at the house as if they were so much nuclear waste, burned a hole in his pocket. Letters should be for ever outside his remit. He was never going to write one.

‘Tell that girl to pop in and see us when she's passing,' Sal had urged him several times. ‘I don't know why she doesn't, really I don't.'

George had never relayed the message. He had hinted to Isabel that the neighbours were private people who had never forgiven the débâcle of their
wrecked car. Frankly, Sal was someone else he did not particularly want to share: George was anxious to keep his acquaintances in different pockets, in case they got together, pooled information and found out where he came from.

He heaved a sigh of relief when he got to the gates of the house. A trail of smoke emerged from a chimney. Back at the hostel, Derek had gone quiet, possibly ashamed. No repercussions for last week's rejection. What a fuss over nothing.

Not quite nothing. Trying to avoid the shameful memory of fear, George could see what Derek meant about the unposted letter from Isabel Burley to her lover. ‘I'm sorry if I drew blood,' she had written. ‘Sometimes I want you so much it makes me claw at you …' The sentence had been reread dozens of times and made him hot. They were all like that, however they disguised it, bitches in heat. George could not catch Isabel's eye, but after the business with the brother, when she had been so helpless, and after his slow absorbing of a letter containing more nonsense than sense, he found he did not mind her quite as much. It was a dull, sullen dislike he carried now; no longer acute. His mind would not stay still but skittered around like the dog when shown her lead: he wanted to chastise it.

Two skinny boys who should have been at school skulked by the gates and scattered as he drove through. Little kids, more down at heel than he had ever been and even less safe. He pitied them for having nowhere
to go. George trusted small children and people far older. It was the swathe of humanity in between which made problems.

Everything was as he liked it. Quiet. He put down the letters (two bills, one personal) with care. Serena was dressed and waiting for the kiss to be given behind her daughter's back. It seemed a long time since he had been free to intrude in her bedroom. Sit on the bed and listen to her telling stories, before he told his own. He still had the silver teapot in his car, but he already had enough. Nearer Christmas he would buy the princess her present. Something to help with the problem of words.