There Should Be More Dancing (10 page)

Finally, Walter strode into the funeral parlour. He looked at his family sitting fearfully on one side of the coffin, and then at the women opposite, Lance's sisters, Faye and Joye, and between them a thin woman with movie-star hair and lips, sitting with the bar flies sniffing and dabbing their eyes with balls of damp tissues. He fixed on the slender blonde at the centre of the weepers, then his eyes glazed and turned to Lance's coffin. After two long seconds he walked straight up to it and punched it, a haymaker, and it fell with a loud
thud
on its side. The lid popped off and Lance rolled across the polished parquetry like a log.

Walter paused and looked down at his father, then he eyed the crowd, spotted Morris, and reached for his shirt front, but Morris sprang up, striking out like a swimmer off a starting block. Only Margery remained where she was, the guests scattering around her. Someone called, ‘Fifty on the Brunswick Bull,' and Barry said, ‘Fifty on Dodgy Morris.' Walter and Morris fought, staggering, rolling and dragging each other from one side of the funeral home to the other, chairs toppling and vases falling. Finally, Morris got Walter in a clinch, ‘Give in, Wally, give in – you're just walking up Queer Street anyway.' Further enraged, Walter flung him off like a scarf, picked him up and hurled him through the stained-glass widow – a depiction of
Pietá
. Then he straightened his hair and walked calmly out of the parlour, knuckles bleeding. Behind him, the guests stayed pressed against the walls, looking down at Lance the Lad with his arms folded stiffly across his army uniform, his marbled ankles in his blue-and-white knitted socks, all around him spilled flowers and shattered leadlight glass.

Faye and Joye asked for a copy of the will, but Margery told them to ask Pat. Pat was executor; she had the will hidden somewhere. As far as Margery was concerned, they'd spoken to Pat and everything was settled.

Morris left for Thailand the very next day. Margery doubled her cross-stitch output, Judith took up eating in earnest – ‘I thought Dad was a good bloke, but he's just like the rest of them' – and Walter took to drink, disappearing completely.

Margery waited and waited, running to the phone when it rang, gazing down the street, checking her letterbox several times a day, but her sons didn't come back to her. She said to Cecily, ‘God does not exist, and those people who believe in their invisible friend obviously don't understand that He is a cruel menace.'

~

Five years on, outside the recreation room of the psychiatric wing at St Vincent's Hospital, a tram slowed, clanging its bell twice. Inside, Walter leapt from a corner, his footwork taking him around the ping-pong table, his fists pounding an imaginary opponent. An attendant said, ‘
Ding-ding
,' and Walter retreated to his corner.

‘You're the Brunswick Bull, eh?' the attendant said, and Walter leapt up again, his boxing gloves raised, his opponent lifeless on the canvas beneath him, the lights hot and the crowd chanting: ‘Bull, Bull, Brunswick Bull.'

Consequently, Walter was resurrected, again, dried out and woken from a nightmare where he'd spent years fighting the sucking arms of an alcoholic octopus, swiping insatiable worms from his ears and smacking at ants under his skin, and then his mother reappeared above him again, her arms ready to hold him. He returned to things he knew – his mother, brother-in-law, sister and neighbourhood. He had no idea they had all fallen with him – once when he lost the fight and again when he lost the battle – nor did he know that they would all fall again.

I'd like to go down for a bite to eat but I'm not confident about the door. They give you a plastic card to unlock it, and it's very heavy. But there's cheese and biscuits over there, and I'll make another cuppa, though it's only a tea bag.

Anyrate, while Anita was dusting that day, she picked up the photo of Lance. I remember it clearly. She asked, ‘Did your husband ever talk about his war experience?' Those were her very words: ‘Did your husband ever talk about his war experience?'

He did, but it sounded to me as if New Guinea was a terrific place, the highlight of his life. The occupying forces had a wow of a time, and he always spun Anzac Day out for a week or more, but I couldn't very well say that to the new home help, could I? So I said no.

She dusted Pudding next, so I told her the photo was taken when she won the Victorian Amateur Scottish Dancing Association Championship. Pudding gave up the Scottish dancing when she started going to the private high school, which was a pity, if you ask me. The dancing might have kept her weight down a bit. Not that
she's fat, exactly, but she's inclined to be hefty, like the Blandons.

Then this Anita really shocked me. I didn't ask for her opinion, but I got it anyway. She got a chair and took the photo of our ex-Prime Minister down from above the door and sprayed him with glass cleaner, and all I said was, ‘Be careful with that photo. He was the most important and influential leader of the nation we've had since Menzies.'

She said, and I'm quoting here, Cecily, ‘Yes, his influence played an important role in prejudice.'

I said, ‘I think he was only trying to protect us from terrorists,' and she said, ‘Well, I think he was a heartless, old retrograde who wanted votes from all the bigots who think refugees should stay at home or die or both.'

‘They're queue-jumpers,' I said, and I remember thinking at the time,
Well, that speaks volumes about the type of person you are
,
Anita Potter
.

Pat was exactly the same. During an argument about boat people one day, I'd said to her, ‘At least the Prime Minister's got the economy in good shape,' and she replied, ‘Yep, the rich are richer but he's gunna get booted out by the workers, if you ask me.'

I said, ‘Why would I ask you anything, Pat Cruickshank?'

‘You'll find out,' she said, nodding. ‘You'll find out everything, Princess Margery, and then you'll know I was a careful friend to you.'

At the time I just scoffed at her, but of course I did find out. But I also know now that Pat, my oldest neighbour, didn't tell me anything because she was one of them, the conspirators.

But she was right. I do know everything now. She must have enjoyed herself so much at my expense.

A careful friend to me, indeed.

The shame of it all is that Morris knew everything as well, it seems. He was in the middle, I imagine, torn amongst his family, and so he couldn't say anything, I suppose . . .

~

Anyrate, then Anita asked me all about my life. No one's asked me about myself since Great Aunt Fanny asked years ago what I was going to do when I left school, so I suppose it was considerate of Anita, though I imagine they're trained at the home-help school in how to conduct a respectful conversation with senior citizens.

‘Well,' I said, ‘I'm seventy-nine. There was a special birthday lunch for me at a very grand hotel in the city on Sunday.'

‘What hotel?'

‘The Tropic. It's very tall with a hollow bit in the middle – an atrium, they called it. People go there to jump off. They land in the buffet area.'

‘Handy to the service entrance, I s'pose.'

‘Are you Irish?' I asked.

‘Not Irish. Why?'

‘We had an Irish girl at school called Potter. She believed in pixies.'

‘I've been away with them once or twice. Where were you born?'

‘Well, Anita,' I said, and I told her all about our wonderful life and how Dad worked on the railways, how he was a station master at one stage. I told her about our brothers and sisters – Clarry, Shirley, Willy and Terrence. They're all dead now, except possibly for Shirley. Remember our family picnics and the sing-a-longs, Cecily? Our favourite picture,
Mrs. Miniver
? Remember the letters we got from Walter Pidgeon? I kept our membership of the Walter Pidgeon Fan Club until he died in 1984. I was more upset when he died than I was when Lance died two years later. Wasn't Walter Pidgeon respectable and decent? He was kind and handsome, too, a perfect husband really. ‘We were happy, back then,' I said.

Anita said, ‘Yes, the “good old days”, when everyone was happier,'
as if it wasn't true, so I said that we
were
happy. She just shrugged and said, ‘I've come to understand you've got to live in the now, seize happiness now – you can't just be happy with memories and hindsight.'

At the time I thought it was a cruel thing to say. So I said to her, ‘In the good old days we were thoughtful, we had manners.' She might be able to make tea, but she should have known better than to say something like that to someone whose greatest asset is their past, since there's not much future left. And everyone's gone now.

Now that I think about it, perhaps because she looked after old Mrs Razic and others she was able to see it's best to live for the now. People live for themselves these days.

Funny that I mentioned you that day, especially to a stranger. It was nice to say your name out loud to someone after so long.

Cecily!

Do you know that if you had meningitis now you wouldn't have died? Ambulances come within minutes these days and save you. Mind you, they don't hurry when they're called to bowling clubs because they know it's just some old bloke twitching away on the hard, perfect lawn, clutching his shirt front.

His teammates at the bowling club told Mum that the last word Dad ever breathed, as he lay there fading away, was your name.

Anyrate, the truth is we
were
happier back then. These days to feel fulfilled you have to have a lot of money; in our day we had fun, and we had our whole life together planned, but we never had a
chance because you died. Just when we were about to become the people we were meant to be.

‘That must have been sad,' Anita said.

It still is.

Not only did she rehang the picture of the Prime Minister upside down that day, she also seduced Walter. He called in after his hygiene class, came bowling up the passage with his book, pens and pencils in a plastic bag, intending to have it out with Anita the Hun
,
but he was ambushed. Didn't stand a chance. From the second he laid eyes on her, standing there on my kitchen chair hanging the ex-Prime Minister, he was helpless. She got down and stood there in front of him, shining like a lorikeet – blue eyes and blue uniform, the thick eyeliner, hair electric and her scent mixed with my homely roast-chicken atmosphere.

I said, ‘This is Anita, Walter, the new home help. The one with
the list
.'

Anita held her hand out, smiling in her seductive way, but Walter was paralysed, his mouth hanging open. I wanted to put my finger under his bottom lip to prop it up. She said, ‘How are ya, Walter?' and Walter wiped his hand on his footy jumper and shook her hand, saying, ‘I've never been better in my life.'

At the time I thought she was better than those Diana Dors blondes, mostly card girls, who used to hang off Walter. In the newspaper photos there was always at least one buxom tart under his arm, smiling under a rigid platinum thatch, eyes like boot polish brushes. Pat used to be platinum-blonde in the sixties, and look at her now. Bald. Walter actually had a proper girlfriend once, before he got famous. Doreen was her name. She was Catholic. I asked him if she was a practising Catholic and Morris called from the sleep-out, ‘It's not Catholicism she practises, that's for sure, eh, Wally?' Walter
didn't think being Catholic was important. ‘The important thing is that even Catholics have got the important bits,' he laughed.

I tried again because Walter was practically dribbling. ‘Now listen, Anita, Walter's got something to say about that list, haven't you, Walter?'

She wriggled her hand out of his, smiling like a female trapdoor spider with her mate cornered, rubbing her fangs together. ‘Just a few alterations around the house will help keep your mum at home. Hope you don't mind.'

Walter reached for my notepad on the table, letting his supermarket bag thud onto the floor. ‘Just explain to me, Anita, precisely, exactly what you want me to do and I'll do it. I'll do anything you want.'

‘I'll show you,' she said and led him all over the house, telling him things that needed doing: organise an electrician to replace the broken light switches, get someone to set up a seat in the shower, reposition the handrails over the bath so I could actually reach them. ‘Margery's privacy and safety will be assured if you adjust all the doors, specially the front, back and bathroom doors so that they close properly,' she said, as if she was some sort of expert, and Walter, sounding like a love-struck teenager, said, ‘I'll even put locks on them, and I'll patch up the hole in the lounge room ceiling.'

She smiled up into his handsome face. ‘Margery's heating bills will fall in winter.'

‘You're wonderful,' he said and straightened his left leg, tugging the hem of his shorts, which is a quirk of his when he's nervous or excited. I made some sort of rude noise then. I had to – I was starting to feel nauseous – and he regained his emotions. She kept on at him, told him he had to put new taps on every tap, put non-slip tread on the back step and, most importantly, smoke detectors. ‘I can get an electrician if you like,' she offered, but Walter said the job was right. But it wasn't. He can't read or write very well anymore, so there were
just scribbles all over my shopping list, and his memory's about as concrete as chicken wire.

‘I can do all of this next week, after my uni course.'

‘That right? Which uni?'

‘Council of Adult Education.'

‘I've been there, did tap dancing.'

‘I'm doing food hygiene. The place where I work's changing to a hotel for international travellers.'

‘A backpackers?'

‘Yep-see-dep-see.'

‘What's going to happen to the residents?'

Walter's proud smile fell way and he looked at the ceiling, thinking. ‘I guess they'll find somewhere else to stay.'

‘Under a bridge,' Anita said. ‘If you change to a backpackers you still get drugs and drunks, and those poor old men end up in a dump bin or a doorway somewhere.' She left Walter standing in the kitchen, frowning at the ceiling. She put a little torch next to my bed, saying, ‘Make sure you mind your shin.'

‘She's real nice. Smart too,' Walter said dreamily, but, knowing what I know now, I bet she got into her loud, striped car, rubbed her hands together and said, ‘That solves everything.'

But little did she know Barry and Judith were brewing a separate conspiracy.