Let's Dance (16 page)

‘I thought you might like to go out for a meal,' he was suggesting. The sound of the phone was so unfamiliar during the day, it had startled her. Serena hovered near, alive with curiosity.

‘Where is there to go?' Isabel realized she sounded ungracious.

He chuckled. ‘You're out of date with local sophistications. Chinese, Italian, you name it, we do it.'

‘I'm not sure about leaving Mother.' The longing must have sounded in her voice, replete with memory of Serena's capacity for sabotage. Broken crockery. Cat's pawmarks in the trifle. Soap down the gullet. Torn books and frantic letters. That was what she did all day: she repaired wreckage and found it impossible to explain.

He hesitated. ‘Batten down the hatches. She'll be all right. Promise her next time we'll take her too. You've got to get out, Isabel.'

‘Yes I have.'

‘Where would you like to go? What would you like to do?'

Deferential questions of this kind always irritated her. If a man issues an invitation, he should also make the plan.

‘Wherever you like. I don't know. Somewhere nice.' Nice: another word despised by Mab. Pleasant then, a break, a change.

Andrew put down the phone in the auction-room office feeling slightly deflated. He weaved his way across to where his father sat with Doc Reilly, occupying adjacent corners of a large table of scrubbed pine, each nursing a cup of coffee in front of a shared ashtray.

‘Anyway,' Doc Reilly was saying. ‘I've told the police
it's only a matter of time before she gets burgled, so would they take the patrol out there at night? He says resources are stretched, old son, what with Christmas round the corner. Anyway, most of the young lads, including his own, don't even know where that house is. Safety in obscurity. There ought to be a Latin phrase for it.'

‘Who?' said Andrew.

‘Old mother Burley. The same old sweetheart you were asking after earlier on. There's been kids up there, pinching things. Kids have grown-up brothers with bigger eyes. That dog of hers is as much use as a wet blanket. Scarcely wags its tail without wondering if it's still attached.'

John Cornell nodded sagely, plucked a cigarette out of a packet and held it to the light, as if looking for a hallmark to prove that this one, at least, was good for his health.

‘There's a man up there half the day, though. What's he called? George?'

‘For what that's worth. Mustn't judge a man by his history.'

‘What's that supposed to mean?' Andrew asked sharply.

Doc turned a cunning eye on him. Andrew could detect the guarded glance of cynical compassion.

‘It means he was in my surgery two weeks ago. Being brave about what looked to me like bronchitis. Gives the address of the hostel on the estate. You know it. Oh no, you probably don't, they won't be asking you
in to value furniture, miserable dump. Sort of closet institution, where they put ex-convicts. To rehabilitate. What a joke. No wonder he likes going up Mrs Burley's. Does all of us good to get out of the house, but it surely applies to some more than others.'

‘Where is this bloody place?' John Cornell lit the health-giving cigarette, shifted in his seat. The doctor recited an address. John Cornell nodded slowly, scratched his rump. Doc Reilly wagged his finger at Andrew.

‘Don't you let on I told you that, will you? George loves dogs, so he must be all right. And the old lady loves George, even if society hasn't much time for him. Whatever else there is about him is none of our business, is it?'

‘Unless he was a burglar himself.'

Doc Reilly patted Andrew's shoulder with heavy-handed condescension. ‘Not as far as I know.'

‘You going courting, Andrew?' his father asked, still absorbed in his cigarette. ‘The fair Isabel again?'

‘Chance would be a fine thing,' Andrew smiled. He had learned never to rise to the bait with his father. Or keep secrets that could be held in evidence against himself later. ‘Thought I'd get her out of the house. Good for us all, like the Doc said. You should know.'

‘She's a nice young woman, that,' said the doctor, watching Andrew walking away whistling, trailing his fingers over the dusty furniture. ‘But what was she thinking of when she was eighteen, nineteen and twenty, John? Men. Nothing but men. We aren't worth
it. They give us what we want and we call them tarts. Did you ever hear about those letters her aunty sent to her boyfriends? Or maybe it was her mother. I've never been sure.'

John Cornell scratched his rump again, an irritating habit.

‘Hostel for ex-cons on Acacia Drive? Do you know, I think when young Derek comes in this afternoon I might just tell him we don't need him any more. I don't believe in rehabilitation. Or leopards changing spots.'

‘Now, that isn't fair, John.'

‘Nothing's fair, Eamon. Look at it outside. Night already. That isn't fair, either.'

T
he gang came across the fields about ten o'clock at night in a big three-ton truck, which Dick informed them, too late, he had never driven before. He was really the butcher's boy in disguise, used to delivering small parcels. He was also as high as a kite, nerves, grass or what, Bob neither knew nor cared, as long as he did not let go of the wheel when smiling as constantly as he did. The sniggering unnerved Bob, but there was no smell of alcohol and the back of the lorry was clean, hosed down every day, Dick said. Bob had supplied a mattress from his back shed, which made the others laugh in unison from the moment they pulled away. What was so funny about a mattress? His other contributions were ropes, old sheets of the kind his incurious wife despised, blankets and other forms of protection for what they were about to steal. May
the Lord have mercy on it, the way Dick drove and Derek, with his wicked little elbows extended like chicken wings, digging into their ribs, snorting with laughter although there was no joke except a wagon that behaved like a bucking mule resentful of the saddle. This was all going to go wrong: Bob knew it in his bones, jolted by the van, jarred by the company. He felt like a bride
en route
for a wedding ceremony she already regretted; all dressed up and nowhere to go. The back of this thing, still sweatily damp on account of the lack of warmth needed to make it dry, resembled a shambolic travelling bordello, equipped for a cheap sex maniac. It was only later he realized what had made the others laugh. The mattress was already stained; the bars against the side were designed for the safe carriage of meat. All it lacked was confetti for the takeaway bride of Dracula.

Halfway up the track from the church to the house, coming through a puddle of water, the engine stalled. That was the second time they should have turned back, but they did not. Within half an hour, the engine had dried out and on they went, still exactly like a wedding procession: slow, sure, late.

A clear night with a kindly moon and the promise of frost. There was another chance to turn by the gates of the house and leave. The near side of the van hit the lefthand pillar with a noise as loud as a scream. Dick reversed away, turned off the engine, waited. All conversation died. Then they went on.

I could get six years for a few hundred pounds,
Bob muttered to himself: it don't compute. They coasted slowly down the slight incline to the back door, stopping far short of it. The house glared at them. The passenger door opened with a creak that felt like an injection straight into his spine, making him choke back a groan. They could have been a team of clowns waiting in the wings to perform to an audience already inclined to jeer. They moved towards the back door, one sniffing loudly, the other one hands in pockets, each hanging back, Dick swinging a hammer from the end of his torn sleeve. Then Derek, taller than usual in the cuban-heeled boots that gave him an extra inch height, overtook the other two and reached the door, tripped over something, swore softly, moved to the window on his right. They could see the mist of his breath against the glass in the light of his silly little pencil torch. Two things happened in quick succession. The outside light above the kitchen door sparked into life, as if it had been waiting for something to jolt a loose connection. It illuminated a ferret astride a bowl half filled with milk; the ferret turned and hissed. Next to it, spread over the step, lay a ginger cat, limbs extended in a parody of sinuous fireside stretching, frozen for all time. Definitely dead: you could tell from its peculiar immobility, the angle of the throat and the awful spread of the jaws.

Then the other lights, inside the house, came on. Derek at the window, standing lower than room height in a flower bed, found himself chest level with a naked
woman. She had an arm outstretched, doing something with the curtain, which she yanked so it half covered her form and also made her impatient. One large bosom, as big as a melon, exaggerated by proximity and condensation, waggled with the effort. A half-drawn blind behind the curtain obscured her face. The pen torch dropped behind a clump of ragged dahlias. Derek staggered back, hypnotized by flesh so close he could have pressed his nose into her belly-button. When he turned, he saw Bob and Dick moving back towards the van. They were retreating uncertainly, away from the cat. The ferret followed, spitting. In terror Dick grunted and farted, flinging the hammer. It hit the ribs of the ferret with a tiny thud; there was a shriek of pain.

Derek threw himself against the bonnet, pushed like fury. The wagon was moving as he clambered through the open door, remembering, foolishly, not to slam it, as if the noise of the engine were not already loud as they coasted back through the gates with accidental ease and a whining noise. Halfway across the road the brute stopped again and again Dick kicked it into life. The travelling bordello accelerated back in the same direction from which it had arrived, all of them shamed into silence as they lurched over holes in the track until they reached the main road. Turned left past the church; you could swear the dead in the churchyard winked, stuck two fingers out of their fucking gravestones, but that was what Bob said later. For the moment he was speechless.

Dick spoke first. ‘Who was it? Her with the curtain?'

‘I dunno. Must've been someone.'

‘You're fucking right, someone. Old or young?' Bob had found his voice.

Derek faltered. ‘I dunno. Big on top. Big. She had a fork …'

The giggling began again, relieving them. Great snorts of giggles, hands between knees, nearly wetting themselves, so infectious the sound that Derek joined in.

‘In her hand,' he added. They were hysterical by now, utterly helpless. Dick, hugging the central white line, swerved to avoid a saloon car coming up fast on the deserted road. He had got the hang of the wagon, even felt grateful to it. Everything was outrageously funny. Bob roared, Derek giggled, Dick insisted they stop for a pee. In this camaraderie, against the backdrop of failure, suddenly brave again, they pretended that this had been the dummy run and planned the second attempt.

M
aybe this was a second attempt. Maybe Andrew was treating her as man does woman, flirting without being obvious. Maybe he was simply as kind an individual as he seemed and was being nice to her. Whatever the reason for his actions, Isabel forgot to question, and since there was no reason to impress, failed to try, found herself relaxing. She was also starving for the kind of food she no longer saw: tagliatelle, green salad,
the sort of meal it was a balm to eat, a million miles away from Mother's favourite fish and chips. Serena liked the food she had liked as a child: porridge, bread and butter, jelly and custard. Isabel tried to tell Andrew this, joking and gesturing between mouthfuls, gulping wine. He listened in a way men rarely listened, teased her about the sheer amount she consumed. It wasn't flirting, she decided; it was talking, about something and nothing, while on the other side of the small table his smile grew more attractive, his eyes browner and the grin she had remembered more endearing. On top of that, as well as zabaglione, she could see him persuading Serena to release her baby grandchild and watch fireworks. OK, he was a nice, unpretentious man with the dress sense of a grandad.

He saw something else. A beautiful, insecure woman with a comic propensity to pull faces and mimic voices. One who defied her intelligence, pushed it down like rubbish in a sack. Acted as she was expected to act until no one was watching, unsure of her authority or talent to amuse. Ready to trip over her feet and let someone ride roughshod over her too-thin body and too-unsatisfying life. All because of the chasm within. He did not know if his observations were right, but since he had done more observing of women than touching of them, watching them dance attendance on furniture, husbands, himself, he hoped his perceptions were accurate and despised himself for the sense of distance that encouraged him to make them. Before grace, after grace, eating food, digesting
it, driving along in his car, he was always looking at people like a mild, uncritical voyeur. As if passion were something he had eradicated with the help of an inoculation. He ordered more coffee. Half a bottle out of two shared hardly counted in the drink-driving stakes: and she was steady as a rock as she moved through the place on the way to and from the ladies' loo, not a tremor. He was ashamed of observing that, too. He had a head for the stuff as good as this girl sitting opposite, laughing one minute, then looking at her watch.

‘Cinderella time,' she said. ‘Gotta go. My mother will turn me into a pumpkin.'

‘You give life, you take it away,' he murmured, finding her coat.

She paused in the act of shrugging into it. ‘What do you mean?'

‘That's what your mother will have done. If this goes on and on, that's exactly what she will have done. Taken your life in exchange for the preservation of hers.'

‘It doesn't matter.' She was agitated, to the extent of pressing one arm into the wrong sleeve. Cold outside, winter, instead of autumn. She did not want to go home. Thought of breath on windows, a house where heating demanded labour and preparation, like all the tasks from slow dawn to early dusk. The constant watching, of her mother and herself. The hard-won patience, the constant reiteration to herself of how much, at last, her mother loved her.