Dancing Lessons (15 page)

But that was as nothing compared to what happened when we returned home from the bookshop and she pulled into the porte cochere at the entrance. For who was standing right there, having just come out of another car that was driving off, but Mr. Bridges, him that I had murdered. Looking back, I am amazed that the first thought that came into my head when I saw him was pleasure because I was looking so smart. Then reality overtook me. I wanted to sink into the ground as he turned towards us. He frowned when he saw me, and then he looked at Celia and his face lit up. She was already walking towards him and extending her hand. They knew each other? Who didn't know her? They were greeting each other as old friends and then she turned to me and said, “I believe you have met my mother, Mrs. Samphire?”

I could see the various emotions washing over his face, for he had made a special effort to avoid me since that fateful day, barely nodding if we happened to cross each other's path. But good breeding won out and he extended his hand and said, “Well yes, under rather curious circumstances but never mind, now I know who she is …” and me not looking but stretching out my hand and muttering “pleds2meetusorryabouttheother dayidon'tknowwhati …”

Barely touching my fingertips, he turned away from me and was saying to her, “Samphire? I had no idea that was your maiden name. I'm sure I know your relatives, there's only one set that I know of, used to play cricket with them when we were boys, me and my brother though we were a lot younger … our uncle had a property near theirs and we spent our holidays … George, no, what was his name, he was the most brilliant fast bowler we had ever seen, blasted my stumps every time. No, not George, it was …”

“Geoff,” she said. “That's my uncle. My father's youngest brother. He was known all over …” and they were away at it. Cricket… and what had happened to Uncle Geoff … and his children … one of whom she saw all the time and …

I just gaped at her, shocked. How did she know this? But of course she was her father's daughter, wasn't she? I had made a point of never taking them to their father's home. His mother understood, especially since she was the one who had seen to it that Sam and I moved away after we were married. She visited us from time to time, but she never once suggested that we visit her. I can't remember if Sam's brothers visited much, he was more likely to go back to visit them. So how could Celia now be talking about her Uncle Geoff in this familiar way?

Before I had time to consider this, Mr. Bridges was turning to me again, and in my agitation the two packages I had been holding slipped. I caught them just in time, but before I righted them a book fell out, the very one I had bought to tempt him! He bent and picked it up and the title caught his eye as he handed it to me. “Oh, the latest Martha Grimes,” he said with pleased surprise, pulling back his hand and gazing at the front cover and then turning it over and passing his eye over the back. “You are a fan?”

He looked at me properly then, for the first time, I think, and I managed to smile and croak out, “Yes. Are you?”

“Wonderful,” he said. “I've read all her books and I've been meaning to get this one.”

Before I even knew it, I was handing the book back, saying, “Please, why don't you keep it and give it back when you've read it?”

“That's very kind, but I can't deprive you of the pleasure. I'd be happy to borrow it when you are through, though.”

“Don't worry, go ahead,” I said, fishing in the bag. “I have two more of hers to get through.” I held them up in triumph.

“Oh, I have read those,” he said. I already knew this, as I'd seen him with them in the lounge.

He looked at the new book he was still holding. “Well … if you're sure?” His voice was quizzical, but I could see the book lover's greed in his eyes.

I nodded. He looked pleased, paying more attention to the book than to me. “If that's all right, I'd be delighted.” Then he added, looking at me again, “Good to know there's another reader with my taste around, Mrs. Samphire. Perhaps we can do a little book exchange from time to time.”

“Certainly, Mr. Bridges. And”—I was into this without even thinking—“I'm sorry I was so rude to you the first time we met. I don't know what came over me, it was the music …”

But by the time I got there I'd lost that surprising burst of confidence that had so carried me along, for it came out as “whtcmeovermeitwasthemuzik …” and my voice faded to nothing. I studied the toes of my new shoes.

Celia wasn't a top-flight interviewer for nothing. She was right there with, “Lovely seeing you, Mr. Bridges.” He smiled, inclined his head, and headed into the house.

We stood there for a moment then, she and I. I expected her to say something. I was full to bursting. I thought she had noticed it, the way I had managed to carry on a real conversation with Mr. Bridges, knocking the ball back and forth. I felt like a child, wanting her to praise me. But I don't think she noticed. She leaned over and brushed my cheek with hers, got into the car, and drove off. I stood there for a while wondering why I was feeling so let down after my high a moment ago, how the feeling of warmth we had captured at the coffee shop could have vanished so quickly. I couldn't help thinking, and not for the first time, how animated she seemed when we were with other people, how lacklustre with me, as if I was always the pinprick that deflated her.

BUT IT'S HER FATHER
all over again, isn't it, always putting me down, as if everything I did interfered with his pleasure: “Don't be a spoilsport.” “Don't cling.” “Don't bother me with that now.” Though I never did learn the ways in which I transgressed. He never said, “Don't nag,” for I didn't, if nagging is purely verbal; we never spoke beyond the most basic acts of communication necessary for two people to get married, have children, and run a household. I ran the household, cutting and pasting, turning inside out and basting. He ran me, just as I imagine it had been with his parents. I thought then, and for a long time after, it was my fault, for he was the outgoing one, the talkative one—with everyone but me.

To this day, I have no idea what it was about me that attracted him in the first place. He never said. Not like they do in the books, where the loved one is told something specific and thrilling. Something to make her feel womanly and beautiful, for beauty exists, after all, only in the eyes of the beholder. Why hadn't he followed up and simply seduced me, as he had countless women? Was I so lacking in charm that a noted womanizer disdained me? This is something that bothered me a great deal. Not then, for I wasn't so aware, but later, when I had a great deal of time to think, and wonder. It finally shamed me, defeated me. The thought of being so lacking in attraction.

Once he got me, he treated me with such bemused disinterest that I can only assume his original intention was simply a desire to see how quickly he could bind me to him. Or perhaps I was a ripening fruit to be plucked—and discarded for being too green. Or it could have been that I was simply a victim of a silly schoolboy joke, a way of annoying those complacent and self-righteous relatives, Miss Celia and Aunt Zena. He came from a line of cruel people, I was to learn, people who joked and tormented. I don't know what I did or failed to do, but he was bored with me from the start, for after he took me to his mother and left me there, I hardly ever saw him.

Wasn't his whole family something else! Tropical Gothic, I would have named it, had I known then what that was. Sam's father was dead and his mother lived in the old family house she shared with a married daughter whose husband worked as an accountant and came home on weekends, while the boys—there were three unmarried sons in all—lived together in another house nearby. This was a house of bachelors: “the Bull Pen” the locals called it, for all the Samphire men were noted womanizers, including the father, as I was to learn.

They were a breed of countrymen who were as bold and lusty as their animals. They had some colour and some property; when they took women in whatever way they wanted, usually girls of poor families, it was simply regarded as their due. Nothing had changed since slavery, except the tint of the master. But of course these thoughts never occurred to me then. I was just like the daughters of the field labourers: I too was up for grabs. I questioned nothing.

We women were never allowed in the bachelor house, and from all the sounds, they lived a raucous, drunken life. A frequent visitor was the fourth brother, Johnnie, who was married and had children but seemed hardly to have spent time at his own home, which was about a mile away. It was only after arriving there that I understood what would have driven Aunt Zena's disapproval of Sam, of all the Samphire men.

SAM'S MOTHER, DAISY, CALLED
Ma D by everyone including her own children, was a small, lopsided, sweet woman who simply took me over when he brought me to her. When, late that afternoon, he handed me down from the horse, I was trembling, aching, tired, and ready to weep from the numbness and confusion that had begun to overwhelm me from the time we left the river and set out for the unknown. On that journey I can truly say I lost track of time, as I clung tightly to him, my lifeline, my fog of confusion lifting occasionally to focus on this romantic dream I had of what awaited us, the two of us, when we were alone together at last.

When we stopped at this huge, sprawling, unpainted wooden house that didn't seem at all ramshackle to me—rather a filigree of wood sun-baked silver and magical—and he lifted me down, I could barely stand. He had to steady me as my knees buckled; but, even in my confused state, I sensed the lack of contact, the impatience, as he held me. He did smile at me as he said “Whoa,” and O how that smile lifted me, for my emotions were oscillating like a toy windmill in the breeze. For a moment, smiling into his face, losing myself in the blue-green eyes that seemed to warm me, I did feel that everything would be all right. Until he turned his head and I turned too to look at the house that should have been empty, like the landscape, with no other actors but us two, playing out our roles, to see this figure filling the doorway. She came out onto the veranda and looked over at us, shading her eyes as if to see better. And then she came down the steps, crablike, and headed in our direction. I could see she was a small woman dressed in a house dress—a collarless short-sleeved shift of dark blue cotton, her feet pushed into ankle socks and house slippers, a hairnet holding down her steely white hair, her dark brown face surprisingly seamless, though pulled to one side by a nasty scar. I was further confused as to who she was by the fact that Sam looked nothing at all like her.

As soon as she appeared, Sam let go of me so quickly that I lost my centre of gravity and stumbled and I had to shake my head to clear it. I watched him stride quickly to meet her. I could tell he was already speaking and gesturing as he neared, but moving too far away for me to hear what was being said. I stood there, feeling foolish, not knowing what to do. They faced each other and talked for a while. I could see her looking over at me, shaking her head and throwing up her hands, palms facing inwards. He threw up his hands—a different gesture, palms up and out—and I could imagine his ingratiating smile. I could see she wasn't smiling. She shook her head many times. From her hand gestures, I could tell she was angry. But Sam with his talk and gestures became even more persuasive, and she threw up her hands one last time and headed in my direction.

I felt true terror then, for I had no idea who this woman was or where Sam had brought me. I felt both threatened and guilty, as if I had transcended some boundaries, but what these were I had no idea. I was overcome by the same kind of shyness and embarrassment I felt at meeting anyone strange, the shyness that made me want to run and hide when even relatives came to visit Miss Celia. But now there was nowhere to hide, for I was exposed by this new landscape that was treeless and flat and open as far as the eye could see. The only movement was the john crows wheeling far above in the seamless blue sky that couldn't care less but was simply allowing the heat to pour down like rain. I was damp with sweat, and I felt my legs, my whole body turn to jelly as the woman neared. Sam, behind her, smiling, hat in hand, didn't make me feel any more assured. More than anything, that smile, that overarching confidence reduced me, making me feel as if I had done something shameful and had no right to be in this place.

Although I kept my head down, I could see her scrutinizing me as she came on. When she reached me, she stood close, so close that I was forced to lift my eyes up to hers and I was embarrassed to be staring at the deep gouge on her left cheek that pulled the lid of her eye down so I could see more of the white than I wanted. I quickly looked down again. She didn't move an inch. I could feel her staring, until I was forced to raise my eyes. She locked me in a gaze I couldn't break. She seemed to study every inch of my face for a very long time. And then she nodded her head and smiled, a smile that transformed her whole being from scary to sweet.

“Fabian's girl,” she said.

I burst into tears then. I couldn't help it. Deep horrible sobs, tears of relief. She knew my father! It was the nicest thing anyone had ever said to me in my whole life. And this woman, whom I had never seen before, did something strange. She reached out and put her arms around me and held me close. It made me never want to move. I couldn't name what I felt as I bent my head to lean my forehead on the shoulder of this tiny person who seemed so capable of bearing me up, to a place I had never been before, where my tears could fall freely, without scrutiny, in the open light of day.

SHE FINALLY DISENGAGED HERSELF
and said, “Come child. You can call me Ma D.” She held my hand and led me towards the house, calling over her shoulder, “Sam, you want some dinner?”