Let's Dance Read online

  ‘I only say strange,’ Isabel scribbled, ‘because it is strange to be around someone all the time and not really talk in anything but a kind of baby language. It alters my vision on everything. Did I tell you about taking her to the pub? She wanted chips again, but when she got them, she put half in the top pocket of the man at the next table and smeared him with gravy. Affection, of course, but we won’t be welcome back. But I won’t let go, Joe, because she loves me, and I need to be loved.’

  That sounded pathetic, so she crossed it out. There was another cough. Serena was transfixed by the TV. She raised her hand, pointed two level fingers at the man still running across the urban landscape with his gun and wide open mouth, and shot him, twice.

  ‘Then there’s George, who comes and goes. I don’t know who he is, where he comes from, I don’t know anything except for the fact he turns up. We’ve never questioned George, you know: not even Robert demanded his credentials, because he is so useful. Too late now. Even though Robert does nothing, I’m afraid to ask. Two reasons, I suppose. I want to make her better all by myself, with no one else getting the credit. I want to be able to endure it, and be proud of what I’ve done. And I don’t want people seeing in the windows. Looking at her like something from the zoo.’

  Serena sat back in her chair, obviously satisfied. She knitted her fingers together and nodded at the screen. The dirty spectacles dropped to the end of her nose.

  ‘He’s dead,’ she yelled. ‘That one there. Dead. Shot himself. What a good thing.’

  Doc Reilly had given Isabel sleeping pills. He had not specified who should take them.

  ‘As long as she loves me,’ Isabel wrote, ‘as long as she loves me, I can do this. Only I’m beginning to see things which are not here. Perhaps they never were. Perhaps I need glasses.’

  Robert Burley was not without conscience. That was the way he would have stated his ambivalent state of mind apropos his mother, although no one asked him to state anything except a case. Part of the relative ease of his conscience came first from the fact that his mother had tried to crush his daughter, and although he did not believe this was anything other than clumsiness, the lack of malice aforethought did not quite mitigate the crime. Second was the fact that Isabel deserved the burden of looking after her mother because she had led such a feckless life to date. The third factor was that he knew, by comparison with some of his clients, how lucky Serena Burley really was. She had a house to live in, didn’t she? A pension and a modicum of health, which was a damn sight more than a lot of other little old ladies.

  At the same time he could not quite leave things as they were. He blustered by phone to social workers, without realizing that this long-distance intervention, not discussed with Isabel, created an animus against her for instigating a nuisance and against himself for hectoring. Discussions were not helped by the fact that Robert no longer really knew what he wanted for his mother. An element of control without effort, a salve to his conscience, one social worker surmised. They quite understood why his mother could not stay with him, nor he with his mother. Indeed they were astonished that he should go to such lengths to explain it when no explanation had been requested. Alzheimer’s and the distance between parents and children were both diseases of contemporary life, unlikely to go away. The psychiatric social worker could call upon Mrs Burley and assess the situation, certainly: so could the consultant psychiatrist: indeed, one had done so, at his behest, both before the fire and immediately afterwards, did he not remember? Verdict: she suffered from an affliction of the mind, but could still maintain an independent life with existing support. Now there was a voluntary daughter in residence, there was even less reason to act and besides, what could they do?

  ‘Mental health orders are for extreme cases of danger. Is she still able to pay her bills? Does she eat and wash? Is she incontinent?’

  ‘Yes, with help. Yes, yes and no, I don’t think so.’

  ‘You could try and persuade her to come and live in a home nearer yourself …’

  ‘Get her off your patch, you mean!’ he yelled, furious at the dulcet patience of the tones.

  ‘Mr Burley, I’ve got a call coming through on the other line.’

  Activity was better than inactivity, so Robert was standing in the foyer of a residential home three miles from where he lived, unaccountably nervous. It was all very well to fear death, that was as logical as a dread of pain, but fear of old age had never occurred to him before. Insofar as he considered his own, which was not often, he had envisaged himself as a senior statesman with pipe and slippers, adviser to the neighbourhood, heeded by the young and accorded respect for his wisdom, dying conveniently, as his father had done, before serious infirmity began, his death the object of grief and obeisance to his memory. Indignity did not feature in any of these visions.

  ‘And this is the lounge, Mr Burley. We have bingo on Wednesdays, the chiropodist once a week, a hairdresser Tuesdays and karaoke on Saturdays. Plenty to do.’

  He wanted to say he could not foresee the day when the biggest dose of memory loss would make his mother enjoy bingo or the company of the other women who sat in their chairs lining the walls of the lounge like so many puppets paying disinterested homage to the huge television in the corner. These were images familiar enough to save him from showing his shock, but the view was still dispiriting. These were the sentient beings who watched the screen in the way his baby would watch a moving, glistening object. The thought of karaoke was appalling.

  ‘And these are the rooms. Some people like to share …’

  Dens with single beds and the overpowering presence of the floral. Rose-flavoured air-freshener, chintz bedspreads, everything Serena had despised. Just as she would the antiseptic corridors of polished linoleum, the open doors to bathrooms with pulleys, lavatories with handles set into the walls and, in the distance, the sound of someone howling.

  The mentally infirm, the lady told him, live at the back.

  She had a face shining with kindness, free of hypocrisy. The proximity of a good heart made him realize that he had not got one.

  The overpowering presence of wickedness in the world was not what oppressed him on his way home, but the existence of such reservoirs of kindness with which he could not compete. Saints were so much more irritating than sinners. Especially when they informed him that as long as his mother’s wounds were bloodless, the state would bleed her dry. Parents of his mother’s generation owed it to their inheritors to die young. And who would look after him when he was old?

  The sight of Aunt Mab’s Bristol blue glassware, safe inside the cabinet which housed it along with Serena’s silverware and her pieces of porcelain which he did not really like, hardly filled him with satisfaction, but not with guilt either. Isabel had not noticed, which was her own fault. Pragmatism had dictated the removal of various items on past visits. One day he would give to his daughter those objects Serena no longer knew she possessed, and the love of daughter for parent was surely more enduring than that of son. After more introspection, self-justification and righteous anger, Robert decided to leave things as they were.

  ‘You were very kind to bring the fireworks,’ Isabel said. ‘Very kind. I haven’t seen her so happy in ages.’

  Andrew had a good telephone voice, echoing the authority of the auctioneer, deep, calm, reassuring. She had liked the smell of his tweedy shoulder when she had cried into it, even though she had withdrawn, wiped her eyes, become a hostess. Whatever it was her mother had told her, with varying degrees of emphasis, about never being a nuisance to men, the dictate had remained as solid as an undeniable memory, like the imprint of men’s bodies. They existed to be pleased, but in Isabel’s present role the necessity of being pleasant all the time had faded away and she did not have either the energy or the inclination to flatter Andrew Cornell. She owed him nothing. He was not her kind of man, since Isabel’s kind of men were rarely so undemanding, and he was not a priority. Besides, after weeks of isolation with her mother and tacitur
n George, she felt she had lost her knack with men, whatever the knack had been.

  ‘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.’

  The 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 li
ght 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?’