There Should Be More Dancing (16 page)

Walter sat on his sagging bed in his small room, a hand on each bare knee, contemplating the worn carpet between his thongs. Downstairs, the oven door slammed and he felt better, knowing Mrs Stapleton had the smoked salmon in the oven in time. The deep-fryer was already on, heating the oil for the chips.

He checked the days on the calendar and moved his gaze to the little round mirror over the handbasin. ‘Walter Miniver Blandon, Middleweight Champion of 1983 and nine hundred and ninety-nine days wifout a drink.' He held one hand up and stared at it, willing it to cease trembling. It didn't, so he rolled his shoulders, hunched into a boxing stance, threw a right jab and a left uppercut, and said, ‘The Brunswick Bull,' and turned to his reflection again. He rubbed a tissue over the lens of his sunglasses and saw, looking back, the middleweight champion of 1983, a smooth-faced, dark-eyed, spruce man with a lustrous ducktail and an enchanted blonde smiling up at him. ‘Champ!' he said and hurried to his mother.



He sat with Margery in her kitchen, both of them staring at the tabletop.

‘Poor Mrs Parsons, it's the saddest fing,' Walter said, again and again, and Margery said, ‘Oh, by the way, your Uncle Ron died too,' which made Walter put his face in the crook of his arm and cry, though he had to ask who Uncle Ron was. Then Kevin came in with Fifi and sat in Mrs Parsons' chair and stared at the table. Fifi licked the grime along the aluminium beading of the table trim.

‘I know what you've been through, Mrs B,' Kevin said finally. ‘I found Mrs Bist, remember? But she'd been there for days!'

‘We know that,' Walter spluttered, because it hadn't escaped anyone the day Kevin lifted the pile of sheets under her clothesline, releasing a swarm of fat, green blowflies into the summer afternoon, that they should have missed her, they should have noticed she wasn't marching purposefully up the street, her cardigan stretched neatly over her verandah-sized bosom, her shopping basket brimming with good deeds. Instead, they ate their roast chicken and enjoyed their lemon delicious with ice-cream while next door their neighbour died slowly under a pile of clean bedsheets, a clot the size of a pikelet thickening over her right occipital lobe. Constable Morgan had sat at the very same table with them, waiting for the glum neighbours to tell him something he could write down. ‘It looks as though someone's removed a watch from her wrist. Does anyone remember Mrs Bist wearing a watch? Perhaps it had her name engraved on it? Ruth Bist?'

Kevin had looked uncomfortable, and Margery said, ‘It was an oval-faced watch. Mrs Bist needed her watch, what with all the committee meetings about charitable functions she organised.'

‘Tyson!' Kevin said. ‘It would have been Tyson, for sure.'

‘You didn't hear anything out of the ordinary, Mrs Blandon? Didn't see anyone in her yard? Didn't notice anything unusual, that she was unusually quiet?'

‘She was always out,' Margery had said defensively. ‘And she oiled her front gate, so I never heard her come and go, not that her movements were any concern of mine.'

And now, Kevin asked, as he'd asked when Mrs Bist died, ‘I suppose Mrs Parsons had a will, did she, Mrs B?'

‘I suppose she did.'

‘Where do you suppose it would be?'

‘The nuns'd have it,' Walter said, rubbing his sunglasses on his footy guernsey. Like some bald men wore a hat, Walter wore sunglasses and Kevin saw why – his eyes were bruised and pulpy in their sockets, his eyebrows desiccated and spread wide across the ridge of his brow.

‘Perhaps her accountant's got it,' Margery said.

‘Accountant?' Kevin asked, suddenly alert. ‘Mrs Parsons had an accountant? How do you know? What was his name? Was she was secretly rich? Perhaps she's got a will hidden in there. If you were her, where would you hide a will, Mrs B?'

‘I'm not her,' Margery said.

Walter blew his pliant nose, put his sunglasses back on and pushed his hanky into the pocket of his tight shorts. ‘The nuns will have her will,' he said and Margery repeated, ‘The nuns will have her will.'

‘Yes, you're right,' Kevin said, unconvinced. ‘Can we take your car to the funeral, Mrs B?'

‘Mumsy doesn't go to funerals, do you, Mumsy?'

‘I'll go to Mrs Parsons',' Margery said and retied her apron bow firmly around her waist.

Kevin used Margery's phone to speak to the nuns about the funeral arrangements, and he asked if Mrs Parsons had left a will, but Sister Bernadette changed the subject back to the song Walter was going to sing. When Walter left with Kevin, Margery stayed at her gate, waving at him until he was out of sight. Over at Tyson's, everything
was still except for a plastic bag waving to her from the thick ropes of buffalo grass choking the rose bushes. A curtain swelled in and out of the glassless front window. The sun was setting over the park, and a man in suit pants and a white shirt was kicking a ball with his toddler son, his briefcase propped against the swings, where his wife sat, breastfeeding. Next door, the new construction was deserted. In the letterbox Margery found a pamphlet advertising weight loss for pets (with before-and-after shots of a successful labrador) and another one offering to vacuum her central heating pipes. She stepped carefully back up her short front path, snibbed the screen door and shut the front door behind her.

Then she went through her house, took Mrs Parsons' spare key from the nail behind her door, went straight out the back door, down the three worn steps, through the shed to the lane, then quickly ducked into Mrs Parsons' backyard and into the little house – a replica of her own.

Mrs Parsons' bare house creaked when Margery stepped into the kitchen, so she paused in the chilly stillness. The Scottish terriers on all the shortbread tins stared down at her from the shelf above the stove, and Mrs Parsons' toaster, electric can opener and small electric kettle waited on the bench with her cosied teapot, cup, saucer and tea caddy. Margery was about to sit on the rocking chair when she noticed the imprint of Mrs Parsons' small, neat bottom in the cushion. A single tear gathered in the corner of her eye and seeped into the tiny creases, zig-zagging down the folds across her cheek. She dragged a kitchen chair to Mrs Parsons' old stove where she settled and opened the grate door, leaning down to peer inside. Mrs Parsons' purse was waiting on the powdery ash dust, and sitting next to it was a tin of black shoe polish. Margery assumed it was empty at first, discarded, but it was placed too precisely. The tin felt empty, but something inside rattled, so she turned the small key at
the side and the lid lifted. It still smelled of shoe polish but the inside had been polished clean, leaving no trace of black paste, and there, sitting on a small bed of cotton wool, was a tiny black-and-white photo, an inch by an inch in size, of a newborn infant in someone's arms. It was a man, but Margery could only see the tip of his nose and the side of his jaw. There was also a curved lock of fine, dark baby hair. And there was an envelope, unsealed, with ‘Sisters of Mercy' printed neatly on it. Inside was Mrs Parsons' bankbook. In the end, Mrs Parsons' life amounted to one small tin and a bankbook with twelve thousand three hundred and twenty-two dollars and fifty-seven cents in it. Though Margery's intention wasn't to pry, she did note that from the start of the book a hundred dollars was deposited in her bank account on the first of every month up until one month before February two thousand and eight.

Margery opened the tin again, stared at the lock of baby hair. It was definitely not crinkly. ‘I wonder . . .' Margery said.

When she was just eighteen years old, newly bruised by the reality of her recent marriage, Margery had stepped onto her front verandah to see Mrs Bist and Pat chatting at the front gate. She'd met Mrs Bist once when she had popped in, patted Margery's wrist and welcomed her to the neighbourhood, but she'd never even seen Pat.

‘Here she is now,' Mrs Bist said, and they turned to stare at her. Pat, a slight woman holding a feather duster, her bleached permanent wave caught up in a scarf tied over her forehead, wearing a striped apron over a red dress that was far too dressy for home, said, ‘At last, a face to all the stories we've heard about you.'

Since it was too late to retreat, Margery joined them and the conversation began on the topic of pregnancy.

‘Hear you've been crook in the morn'ns,' Pat said and inclined her sharp chin to Margery's midriff.

It was then that Margery, naïve and bamboozled, understood the implications of her tiredness, her nausea. She turned back to the small house where she lived with her sour mother-in-law and obese sisters-in-law, Faye and Joye, to swallow the acrid toast and jam rising in her throat.

Suddenly Pat leaned in and whispered, ‘Look who's appeared now.' The women turned. Mrs Parsons was standing at her front gate, her sunhat high on her hair, her feet with their pale edges spreading from cheap sandals and her purse in her string basket over her arm. She was caught. It was too late to flee inside, so she kept on with feigned purpose. Her bright-green eyes high in her face failed to meet theirs as she passed, but she managed to smile faintly and say, ‘Good morning.'

It was a sunny day but she had on her cardigan, as usual, over her pretty floral shift. A mumu, it was called.

‘Feel the cold, do you?' said Pat.

‘Yes,' she smiled, shivering a little bit.

When she was out of earshot, Pat nodded to Margery. ‘Tropical. She's got tropical blood.'

Mrs Bist leaned in. ‘A war bride.
His
family didn't approve.'

Pat took up the story, ‘Dash of the tar brush. Her husband shot through, left her because the night they got married he found she was brown all over under her nightie. Racist,' she huffed. ‘Mind you, they do throw back, that sort. Not like the aboriginals.'

‘Goodness,' Mrs Bist said, looking at her wristwatch. ‘Is that the time?' and hurried off down the street.

Pat stepped close to Margery. ‘You'll get to know us all, fit in with how things are. Mr Parsons, as I say, deserted Mrs Parsons, but Mrs Bist lost her husband when he bent down to tie his laces. Dropped dead, just like that. They sold out of slip-ons that week down Sydney Road.' Then she nudged Margery, ‘You must be pretty
happy, eh? New husband, a home and a baby on the way,' to which Margery replied truthfully, ‘I'm hoping to move back to Ascot Vale to give my children a good chance.'

Pat's face fell. ‘That's a good idea, since you just ruined your own chance here.' She stomped across the road to her house, and Margery decided she was very rude. And so she endured Pat, hid from Mrs Bist and, for approximately forty-five years, remained wary of Mrs Parsons before slip-ons brought her and her reclusive neighbour together. One day, when Margery was heading into her sixty-fifth year and Mrs Parsons approaching her seventy-fifth, Doctor Woods suggested Margery tie Mrs Parsons' laces.

‘Has she got a bad heart?' Margery asked.

Over the years, arthritis calcified and stiffened Mrs Parsons' joints and the flesh on her limbs had atrophied, but Doctor Woods said simply, ‘Just old age and a touch of osteoarthritis. Why?'

‘Shoelaces killed Mr Bist, so Lance bought slip-ons. So did Bill, but slip-ons didn't save those two.'

Margery had seen them the day of the explosion, side by side in the rubble right under the stools, just as if someone had come along and lifted the men out of their shoes by the collar.

‘Poor Lance. Poor Bill,' Margery sighed. ‘Pat said they looked like a couple of puppets with their strings snapped. Still, whichever way you look at it, slip-ons are a signal of decline since they mean you can't get to your toes, wouldn't you agree?'

Doctor Woods frowned at Margery over his bifocals, the coiled grey strings of his untrimmed eyebrows worrying. ‘I'll have to think about that,' he said.

So Margery started doing her neighbour's shoelaces. At the time, Pudding was a toddler and learned to tie bows by tying and untying Mrs Parsons' laces, but Judith had put a stop to it. ‘You never know what's dripped onto them,' she'd declared.

If I'd had the time, or my wits about me, I would have thought about the bathroom here. They're very nice. Heated towels, but I'd never be able to get out of the bath, and I didn't think to bring clean panties, not even a nightie, so I've popped myself into bed in my petticoat and I'm looking out at the sky. That's all you can see from up here – rooftops and window lights. That Friday night after Mrs Parsons died I saw Kevin sneak over to her house, the cheek of him prying into an old lady's house, but I'd locked the door. Like I said, the nuns had Mrs Parsons' last will and testament, not that she needed one since there was only one person to inherit her house and savings. The nuns said Mrs Parsons wanted me to have her watch, if I'd like to have it. I thought it would be something for Pud to have, something nice, but really, things should go to people who want them, people who are going to value them. As I say, I've got your hair ribbons, and I kept Mum's pearls.

~

Mrs Parsons' will was a revelation, let me tell you. The things you find out. I'd never have guessed, not in a million years, that Mrs Parsons had a son, a ‘past'.

I suppose I never thought about her much, but I should have noticed something.

Life's too short to go unnoticed.

Naturally I assumed the lock of hair that was there with her purse and her bankbook was Mrs Parsons'. She'd hung onto it because it was straight when she was born, I thought, though now I realise she shouldn't have been ashamed of her hair. She couldn't help it.

There are some things we can't change about the way we are. There's nothing Mrs Parsons could have done about the way she looked, but as I sit here I realise you can be wrong about things. For one thing, I was wrong about Mrs Parsons at first. I will admit I was suspicious of her. She was different, but I know better now. The sadness that woman must have endured. Had I known about her past I wouldn't have cross-stitched that cushion cover with
An undutiful daughter will prove an unmanageable wife
, which is what I gave her this Christmas gone. The year before that I gave her
You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours
, which I felt at the time was appropriate because I helped her with her laces.

And I was wrong about Lance in lots of ways. He always meant well, I suppose. In fact, he said to me once, ‘If you changed the way you saw things, Margie, you might see more things.' At the time I thought he was suggesting I get out and about more, to the pictures or shopping or something.

Wrong again.

It's natural to be inclined to see things the one way, but knowing what I know now, I see I could have ‘seen more things' if I'd really looked.

Lance would have been ninety-one this year, but now he's just soggy dust and crumbly bones with his gold crown on his denture glowing down there in the dark. Mrs Parsons never mentioned her age. At least she didn't miss it, that is, the end of her life, like you do when you're asleep.

I've often wondered if you woke up to take your last breath, Cecily. Or did you lie there in my arms, looking at the stars through our window, feeling your heart peter, and stop? I wish I hadn't gone to sleep. It's my greatest regret. If you'd just woken me up and said, ‘I'm dying now, Margery,' I could have stopped you from going, or at least been included. Sometimes, Cecily, I can actually feel a sort of aching, as if there's a plum lodged in my chest. I can't swallow, find it hard to speak. Oh, it does hurt so, especially when I notice something lovely or splendid. I used to have several rose bushes, like Mrs Miniver, but when they all bloomed and filled the front yard with bees and ladybirds, I found it made my heart hurt. Spring fills up with singing birds and perfumes, and they find me, even in my sleep, and it grieves me to the point of pain that you, precious love, ‘hidden in death's timeless night', can't know the parts of life that are achingly beautiful. We came from the same cell, you and me. We were the same person, except you were the lighter, dancing through life with a mile-wide grin. I only danced because you made me want to dance.

The day you died you stood in front of the picture theatre with Walter Pidgeon and Greer Garson on the poster behind you, and you looked into my eyes and said, ‘At least Carol in
Mrs. Miniver
didn't know she was going to die.'

Did you know? Did you feel the poison under the crown of your lovely auburn curls infecting you? There, outside the picture theatre in one moment of clarity, did you suddenly realise something relentless was invading you, cell by cell?

After
Mrs. Miniver
, the doctor said, ‘Put your chin on your chest,' and when you couldn't, Dad flopped down in a chair and Mother left the room.

That night, while Mum and Dad prayed, I crept back into our bed and held you tight, and I prayed, then I slept, and when I woke, you didn't.

Afterwards, they watched me. At first it felt as if I was a living tribute or something, as if I held some sort of answer, but I had nothing to say, and if I crumbled it would make it worse for them, and then one day I realised that when they looked at me they were reminded that you were dead. There was nothing I could do. I just sort of went on. Mum just got more and more shrivelled, and I went on living, though it's like living with a shard of glass in my heart. It was always possible to explain, to say, ‘My sister is dead.' Many times I told the story, ‘They sent me to the pub for whisky to rub on her chest then my father got the doctor, but it was meningitis,' and people always make sense of it by saying, ‘Oh, well, no penicillin in those days . . .' But I couldn't make sense of it.

Years later, it finally dawned on me that you were actually not here. One day I just turned to say, ‘Isn't it a lovely morning,' and,
bang
, just like that, years and years later, I understood. Knew. It was vivid to me, finally. You. Are. Not. Here.

But only a year or so after you died, Dad came in and sat down on the bed next to me, patted my knee and said, ‘You've got to let go, lass. You've got to move on.'

So I went to the dance, and I met Lance.

But I could never let you go, Cecily.

~

The week that Mrs Parsons died was shocking. Just shocking. But you've got to be stoic. My mind wouldn't stop. Even my cross-stitch didn't help. I was fretting about poor Mrs Parsons and stewing over Morris being in jail, Lance's wake kept replaying in my head and everything seemed to be accumulating.

If only, I thought, Pat's brain wasn't riddled with rotten, beery holes . . . I could find out so many things. There's so much that's missing.

And now I'm thinking, as I sit here, if only I could explain things to someone, to my children, tell them what it was like living with the glass shard in my heart. Sometimes the days are very long, things I thought I'd sorted out jump around, making me feel . . .
unsettled
. Usually I can settle myself by doing something nice – cross-stitching some life wisdom or polishing Walter's trophies.

When I think about our own mother, Cecily, well, she was never the same after you died. No one was, I suppose. Our mother sent me back to Lance when we found I was pregnant with Walter. I thought she was cruel, and I stayed away. I let them put her in a home. At the time there was no reason she couldn't have come here, and Shirley wrote, saying she'd asked for me. Now that I think about it, I suspect she was sorry she sent me back to Lance. If I'd acted in less of a cruel way, we could have made up for all the heartache. I've come to understand that, at first, it hurt every time she looked at me, because there I was, just getting on with life, married and having a baby, and Cecily wasn't.

And now, I'm ashamed to say that our own dear, respectable mother died alone in a home among strangers.

Behold, on wrong, swift vengeance waits
, which brings me back to the subject of my children and, well, I may as well be down in the tight,
damp dark with you. I'll go out to the balcony soon, and if no one's below I'll drag that chair over there out and fling myself over the balustrade.

But just before I do, one more thing. I do regret that I never got to see my second-born again. Once, as a little boy, after he'd run away, I went to the police station to pick him up and I said, ‘It's a worry to me when you vanish,' and he looked at me and said, ‘I didn't think you'd notice.' It's dreadful to think that Morris thinks I would not be there for him in his time of need, that he doesn't think that, as his mother, I will forgive him anything, even if he's done the worst thing possible. Remember
Pietà
? The sculpture of Mary with Jesus on her lap? We did an assignment on balance and proportion for art at school. In those days we believed in God, and we chose Michelangelo and wrote a composition saying Jesus doesn't look as if he's about to slide off Mary's lap because she had strong legs from riding donkeys, and that's why she was able to balance a grown man on her knees. If Morris had come home I would have held him and balanced him on my knees like Mary holding her boy. It took me months to pay off the glazier after the funeral, but I just assumed emotions were high. Now, twenty years later, I learned why Walter punched the coffin. Not the sort of behaviour Morris would have been expecting – his brother walking in, KOing his father's coffin, punching him in the head a few times, chucking him through a picture window and leaving. No wonder he went to Thailand the very next day. Walter says he was on his way back but someone planted the drugs in his suitcase, and he's ashamed. He probably remembered how upset I was about his cigarette business at primary school. He was charging too much for just one cigarette. It wasn't right. I love my second baby as much as I can love anything, and he doesn't even know it.

I'm the one who feels ashamed.