Dancing Lessons (27 page)

The next day, after some fitful sleep towards morning, I got out of bed at my usual hour and got dressed and went down to the kitchen. Later, at what I considered a decent hour

I phoned my daughter. But all I got was a recording, so I left a message asking if she had heard about Cookie's grandson being shot. I knew that she already would have known and no doubt sprung into action, for she was like that. I said nothing in the message about myself, but I knew that it would be enough of a signal that I was getting back to normal.

MARK YOU, NORMAL IS
not a word I should ever use again in relation to myself, for the events of the last few weeks have convinced me more than ever that I have no idea what normal is. Normal is a universe that is predictable and trustworthy. But I now know that my own understanding of people, of life, is abnormal and deficient. That the life I have lived so far is narrow to a fault, and that insular though the life of Ellesmere Lodge is, it has taught me more in the time I have been here than all the previous years had. Take even the response of the domestic staff when I came into the kitchen, and I'd come specially early to avoid the other residents and Matron. I had gone there to commiserate with Cookie, but it was they who were busily comforting me. As I walked in and gave Cookie a hug, I was truly amazed by the warmth of their greetings, their questions about how I was feeling. As if that mattered now in the wider scheme of things. I asked Maisie if she could bring breakfast to my room as usual, I wasn't yet ready to face the dining room. But really, I was feeling so humbled, it made me decide to face my demons and write down everything that has occurred to so disturb what I had considered to be my new-found equilibrium.

I HAD TO ASK
Maisie when she came what the date was. Then I had to check the calendar for myself, for I didn't believe it. I have no idea where three weeks of my life went. Three weeks to the day! Which started off so normal. Nothing untoward. No hint of summer lightning. A bit of time in the garden, mainly just standing and looking things over. It's the height of summer, hot and dry. There is little work to be done. I did a bit of reading. At lunchtime I endured our new table-mate, who was foisted on us following Babe's death. He waxed long and boringly on the subject of double indemnity. He was an ex-insurance man, light brown, huge shock of white hair, black horn-rimmed glasses, full of himself. Talk talk. Lecture the little ladies. Then back to my room where I was taking in some of my dresses, using a little hand machine Matron has released into my care.

I hadn't seen Mr. Bridges at all since I glimpsed him at breakfast and I assumed he was once again off to do battle with his house or the architect nephew. I was sort of lost in the sewing, in the afternoon lull, a sleepiness that seemed to fall over everything in the hours after lunch, for I found myself nodding off. I'd just decided to give up on the sewing and have a little rest when there was a tap on my door. I knew right away it was Mr. Bridges. A very discreet “rat-tat.” Pause. “Rat-tat.” I took off the glasses I wear for close work, and I rushed to primp in the mirror and straighten my dress before I opened the door.

As usual, my eyes, all my senses, took Mr. Bridges in, every inch of him, from his sparse salt and pepper hair, meticulously cut very, very low, almost disguising the balding at the top, to his thin but attractive raisin brown face, with the two vertical creases on either side of his nose, to his equally familiar everyday attire: brown tasselled loafers without socks, chinos, plaited brown leather belt, short-sleeved white cotton shirt or—today—white Lacoste shirt, neatly tucked in. Everything looking as neat and pressed and perfect on him as if he had stepped out of a magazine. Even his glasses appear to have been designed just for him, rimless, feather-light with no bifocal lines, looking as if they are hardly there so his eyes come through clearly. Bright as a mouse.

“Hello G,” he said, and I noticed he had his mail and some
CDS
in his hand. He smiled and asked, “How are you?” And when I smiled and said, “Fine,” he said, “Can you come across for a minute?” He waved the packet to indicate his door. “There's something I want to say to you.” Say? I didn't know why, but though nothing showed, I felt some kind of current, a slight stumbling of the air between us.

“Sure,” I said. Leaving my door wide open, I moved with him to his room. There seems to be some sort of unspoken etiquette that while I may go into Mr. Bridges' room, it would not do for him to cross the threshold of mine.

I DON'T KNOW WHAT
I expected when I went into Mr. Bridges' room. Probably just hearing some new music he was excited about, for that is usually what a summons meant, and he had that same air of gaiety about him as he did when he brought home something new. But this time he didn't head for the stereo as he usually did, inviting me with a wave of the hand to sit on the couch. As soon as we got inside he closed the door—most unusual!—and he turned to me.

“G,” he said, “there's something I want to tell you. Nobody else, for now.”

He was smiling, with an air of suppressed excitement when he said it, which made me feel almost faint, I was so sure what was to come. But then, instead of continuing, he went to the player and said, in a jocular kind of way, “Let's have a little music then.” He looked at the
CDS
he had bought and read off the names of the performers of each one: “Buddy Holly”—whom I had never heard of—“Ray Charles, the Temptations. Let's see. How about a little Buddy Holly—I used to be crazy about him—just when I first started going to dances and of course I was too shy to dance. But he's so great. He's stood the test of time.”

He put on the
CD
and I put on the headphones as the music came pouring out. It was music that I liked. I automatically started tapping my feet and moving my shoulders to it. The music played on, and I guess we both would have looked comical to an observer, two oldsters wearing headphones and tapping our feet and moving our bodies, I sitting on the couch and Mr. Bridges standing and waving both hands about, swaying his head and singing along. I was so caught up in the silliness of it all I forgot for a moment the important news that Mr. Bridges said he had to impart. He stopped that song and waved another of the
CDS
at me. “The Temptations,” he said. “Songs of our misspent youth. The sixties. Remember?”

I smiled and nodded, but of course I had no pleasant memory of the sixties, it had all passed me by in a haze of loneliness. So I was surprised to hear the soulful outpouring of men's voices in beautiful harmony. I smiled more broadly at Mr. Bridges, but again he seemed lost in the music, moving his upper body, singing the words. This was a new Mr. Bridges to me, relaxed, almost boyish. I took that for such a good sign I found myself caught up in the rhythms of this music too, for my whole body started swaying.

Suddenly he said, “Come, G, let's dance,” and he held out his arms to me. “You've been dying to dance with me from my very first day here,” he added, but he laughed when he said it. “Now's your chance.”

I laughed, too, as I moved where he led, for though it was not the song I had waited for so long to hear, it was as if destiny was at work and we had moved, he and I, into a complete circle. He drew me close but not tight, and my feet and body seemed to move as light as the wind over wynne grass as I followed him.

“You're a good natural dancer,” he said after a while. I was surprised to find I was. I had no difficulty following him. One more thing to add to my inventory.

The song ended and another began, but I hardly noticed the break I was so happy to be in a place where I felt I was meant to be. This transition from friend to Mr. Bridges' arms seemed so natural that I must have entered a dream state because I was jerked back to the moment when he suddenly stopped dancing and I stumbled. I opened my eyes and I saw that he had turned serious again, and he was looking into the distance with a rather strained expression. Again I felt that slight displacement in the atmosphere, like a night hawk or a bat flying at dusk so it is barely seen, just a flash of something not quite as it should be, but so slight it is difficult to tell if it is really there. He seemed to pull himself back from whatever place he had momentarily gone to and we started to move again. After a few minutes he started talking while we kept moving to the beat.

“G, you of all people know how I've wanted to move back to my house.” Was it my heart that went
dah dah dah
along with the Temptations? “But not alone.”
Dah dah
. “Well,” he laughed, “my children would not let me, even if I wanted to.”
Dah dah dah dah dah
. “Now, I've finally found the right …”

Even now I'm wondering if I missed something here, if my thoughts were so focused on what I thought Mr. Bridges was going to say that I missed that beat of his own heart, out of sync. It was all so sudden. He stopped speaking as if he had choked on the last word, made one little gasp, and slumped against me. I moved to hold him up as he swayed. He made another kind of choking sound as I half-carried him over to the bed and lay him down, put his feet up, but by then his body was as unresponsive as a sack.

I'm writing about this now in a rational kind of way, but it happened so fast that all I felt was blind panic. I didn't know what to do, for I had never been confronted by this kind of situation before. I lightly slapped his cheek and called his name, as if he was a child in a faint, then I thought, water, and then I remembered about the tablets he told me he had to take. I dashed for the bathroom and the medicine cabinet, but I got no further than the door, for the bathroom counter itself was covered in pill bottles, an enormous number of them, many with prescription labels. I picked one or two up and tried to read the labels, but they meant nothing to me, for I had paid no attention when the other residents talked about their ailments and medications.

I went back to the bedroom and Mr. Bridges hadn't moved from where I had placed him. I put my hand on his heart and felt nothing, and it seemed to me that he wasn't breathing. He's dead, I thought, my own heart fluttering so wildly I thought it would burst. I had the insane idea that I needed to hold a mirror up to see if he was breathing. The next thought that flashed into my head was, I've killed him. It was like my father all over again. My fatal curse. I must have wrung my hands and spun around a few times and whimpered and then I opened the door and dashed out of the room, uncertain what to do. I don't remember pounding on the door of the next room, not even conscious of whose room it was. But I did recognize Mr. Levy's voice when he called out, “Who is it?”

“Please, Mr. Levy,” I said, “it's Mr. Bridges. I've killed him. You have to come. Do something.” I know my voice was rising higher and higher and my hysteria must have conveyed itself to the old gentleman. For in short order he was there, shirtless in his merino, zipping up his pants, concern on his face.

“Mrs. Samphire, what is it?”

I could only point to Mr. Bridges' room, I was so frightened that no words came and the sound of my own heart was now so loud it was drowning out everything else.

I made to follow Mr. Levy in, but he stopped me at the door. “Wait here, please.” I instinctively reacted to the voice of authority and leaned against the wall, feeling faint, distanced, as if my head was filling up with cotton wool. Mr. Levy was in the room for a long time. I heard his voice and at first I thought he had roused Mr. Bridges, but realized he was speaking on the phone. When he came out the door he seemed surprised to see me still standing there. He put his hands on my shoulders, steadying me. The way he said, “My dear Mrs. Samphire,” I knew, and I got hysterical all over again.

“Oh my god, I killed him, I killed him,” I kept on saying over and over. Mr. Levy in his calm, old-world manner, soothing me, trying to calm me, then pulling me to him and putting my head on his shoulder, putting his arms around me and patting me. “Mrs. Samphire, you haven't killed anyone, Mr. Bridges has probably had a heart attack …”

“No,” I shouted, pulling myself away. “You don't understand. We were dancing and… I did … whatever it was, I caused it. Don't you understand?”

Now it was I holding on to Mr. Levy and shaking him. He gently disengaged my hands and steered me towards my room door and marched me backwards until I was forced to sit on my bed. He held one hand out, as if to keep me in place, as he sat in the chair beside the bed, and then he leaned towards me, like a doctor. Unlike my doctor, who brayed, he did not raise his voice one whit but spoke in his usual soft, melodious way. But it was full of the lawyer's steel.

“Mrs. Samphire. G. Listen to me, please. Are you listening?” My eyes were closed, but I nodded.

“Mrs. Spence is on her way up here. We're waiting on the doctor. I am going to leave you in this room and I'm going to shut the door when I leave. And you are going to stay inside this room, do you hear me.” I nodded.

“Do you understand?”

“Yes.” I could barely get the word out.

He paused for a few seconds, and then he said, “You were never in Mr. Bridges' room. You haven't killed him or hurt him in any way. Correct?” He was articulating very clearly, as if I were stupid or a child.

I nodded.

“Good.” He patted me on the shoulder and then stood up. “I'll call your daughter for you. Promise you won't leave your room. You won't say anything to anyone until she comes. Right?” I nodded yes to everything, for I was suddenly numb, already retreating to a place where I'd want to stay for some time to come. I heard him leave and the click of the lock as the door closed behind him.

I lay in bed, my hand pressed across my forehead to cool it, for I felt I was burning up. I heard sounds in the corridor, footsteps coming and going. Voices. After a while they seemed to fade out until a non-human sound, the screeching of an ungreased stretcher wheel, made me sit up and really listen. But I never heard it wheeled back out, for I was blasted by the ringing of the phone. I automatically reached out and picked it up, and before I could say anything Celia said, “Mom, are you all right?”