There Should Be More Dancing (7 page)

Margery woke early Sunday morning to that particular stillness streets have after a busy Saturday night, and more palings from her front fence were missing. ‘Wretched so-and-sos,' she snarled. Tyson and his flatmates used her fence to light fires. They also tore branches from the trees in the park to cook sausages on sticks or to burn.

She moved her legs to the edge of her bed, sat while her blood oriented itself to her upright position and, when she felt stable, she stood. Again, she paused while her feet adjusted to the weight of her body, and her tarsals and phalanges clicked into position. She rotated her shoulders, loosening her vertebrae, and then rolled her head as much as she could to free her neck. Blood had found its way to her feet; her fingers started to tingle and her heart seemed to be coping so she moved off, best foot first – in this case, her left foot, because her right foot supported a particularly sensitive bunion – sliding her feet into her slippers.

She gathered her dressing gown about her and made her way cautiously out to the lav with her commode pot, and that's when
she found Pat. The noise, a snort, drew her to the shed. It went through her mind to phone the police, or go to Mrs Parsons', but Mrs Parsons' blind wasn't up. She told herself it must be a sick pussycat or a possum and went to investigate, arming herself with the copper stick from the laundry. She shuffled to the shed door and opened it – ‘Here, kitty-kitty-kitty' – but then she noticed that the travelling rug was not folded on the back dash of Morris's car, and the passenger door was slightly open, the small yellow ceiling light burning. Someone was in the car. Margery tightened the belt of her dressing gown, secured her feet in her old slippers and approached the car, squint-eyed and determined. The snoring person was under the travelling rug on the back seat, a hand poking out, and gathered across the knotty, speckled fingers were dress rings, familiar dress rings – a fake black pearl on a silver-coloured band, a plastic cameo, an apex of glass diamonds. And the fingernails – Pat's signature burnt-orange – lit by a shaft of morning light from the gap between the iron roof and the wall. It was definitely her. Margery gasped, her hands went to her cheeks and she said gleefully, ‘She's dead!'

For sixty-one years Margery had watched her neighbour skipping off to Saturday-night ballroom dancing in her stiff, twinkling skirts of many petticoats, and several times a week Pat passed on her way to the pub to have the time of her life with all her hilarious good-fun friends, over-dressed and over-happy. Often Pat would just pose in her front garden in her nylon slacks and matching colour-coded blouses, pressing her nose to her precious ruddy Baronne Prévost rose. Year after year Margery had endured Pat's backhanded compliments about her knitting and sewing, her love of polishing and her colourful cross-stitching; ‘I suppose it's nice . . . if you like that sort of thing.'

Once, back in the 1960s, Pat had said to her, ‘You'd learn a lot if you ever bothered to get off your bed and participate rather than
watching the world pass by your front window, Margery Blandon.' But Margery had gathered in her irritation and replied, ‘You've never been much further than the pub yourself! You think life's just one big party, that you're here just to make a spectacle of yourself.'

‘Life's too short to go unnoticed,' Pat retorted, lifting her apron and shaking it like a cancan dancer in the street. ‘I know exactly what you need, Margery. I bet you've never had an orgasm.'

Margery was indignant. ‘Certainly not,' she said, knowing she was telling a lie, that she and her children had been victim of organisms – nits – from school.

And so Margery felt a sort of soaring disappointment as she noticed the rug rise and fall, felt her stomach turn with churlish malice when the rug fell away to reveal Pat, alive and breathing, crunched up on the back seat, clutching the street directory. There were twigs in her hair, or what was left of it, and she looked like she'd been eating dirt. But she was alive. She opened her eyes, looked at Margery and said, ‘Are we there yet?'

Margery was wondering what to do when she sensed her toe was unusually cold. Looking down, she saw a dark circle in the dirt. A puddle. Pat had emptied her bladder, and Margery's big toe, protruding from a hole at the tip of her worn slipper, was resting in it.

‘You always said to kill you rather than put you in a home, Pat,' Margery said, calculating that it was a full twelve days until she'd need to use the car again, twelve full days until the next pension Thursday, the day she and Mrs Parsons would do their Big Shop.

She bolted the shed door behind her, dropped her slippers in hot, soapy water in the laundry trough and went inside for breakfast.

After tea and toast Margery reluctantly decided to do the right thing. Kevin seemed concerned, so she would tell him. Then Mrs Parsons' blind went up, so she made her way up to her room and got
her new slippers out of their box. Walter gave her a brand-new pair every Christmas, but as she squeezed her right foot into one slipper she found it antagonised her bunion. The other slipper crushed her corn. Her indignation growing, Margery carefully negotiated the undulating cement squares of her garden path in the stiff-soled slippers, holding the front fence as she travelled over the unrelenting footpath to Mrs Parsons. She knocked and called ‘Yoo-hoo', and let herself in to Mrs Parsons' kitchen. Her neighbour was waiting in her old rocking chair, tending the rinsed cottontails and wool stockings draped over the upright electric oil heater. Margery sat opposite her, said, ‘Good morning, how are you today, Mrs Parsons?' and Mrs Parsons said she was as well as could be expected, thank you. Margery reached down and lifted her right foot, and as Mrs Parsons rocked back in her chair, Margery said, ‘Sorry I took so long. I had trouble getting my feet into these new slippers. The trip here today was quite painful.'

‘I'm very sorry.'

‘It's not your fault. You haven't seen Pat, have you?'

‘No. Kevin's been in to ask.'

‘Are you alright then, Mrs Parsons?'

‘Yes, thank you, you're very kind.'

‘See you later.'

‘If it's not too much trouble,' Mrs Parsons said.

Back in her own kitchen, Margery kicked off her painful slippers, put her apron on over her dressing gown and turned up the radio. Buddy Holly was singing, ‘
My
lonely heart grows cold and old
.' She stuffed her thawed chicken and popped it in the oven, peeled the potatoes and carrots and put them in with the chook. She washed, dressed, dabbed some face powder on her nose and chin, admired her fresh blue set in the mirror, then sluiced out the letterbox. The
lass in the small sparkly dress had obviously been drinking something with orange juice. Over at Tyson's, noise thumped through the front window. She stayed waiting at the gate, and soon Walter came striding down the street, thick and hairy in his shorts and black-and-white guernsey, waving like a super star. Under one arm he carried a frozen chook and a newspaper, and his thongs flicked at his imaginary rhinestone cuffs.

‘Nine hundred and eighty-seven days, Mumsy. Nine hundred and eighty-seven days since my last drink.'

‘Nine hundred and eighty-seven days,' Margery said. ‘How are you, Walter dear?'

‘Never better.' He kissed her at the gate and said, ‘Cracked your glasses.'

‘Yes.'

‘Mrs Bist's house has gone.'

‘They shovelled the whole house into a truck and drove it away last Wednesday,' she said.

‘Progress.'

‘Then they dug a big hole.'

‘A pool, maybe,' Walter said.

‘A cellar,' Margery said, and they gazed at the striped reflective ribbon that fenced off the hole in the centre.

‘Quick workers.'

‘Very noisy.' Margery moved to her front door, Walter following. He pause on her verandah to rip an extension cord from a power outlet where the sleep-out once was. Across at Tyson's, the music ceased immediately, and the front window filled with pale, pierced faces. Walter pulled on the extension cord violently, and there was a crash, then loud profanities.

Margery put the frozen chook in the freezer for next week. She didn't mention Charmaine, Angela's engagement or her
disappointment with Blaine, or Pat, though she did mention again to her son that it had been a very, very noisy week. As she turned the potatoes and pumpkin Walter set the table, then, while Margery shelled the peas, Walter read the paper. ‘See Pat yesterday?'

‘Yes,' she said, turning on the peas. ‘How's the hygiene course going, Walter dear?'

‘Good!' he cried and added, over-confidently, ‘Yep-see-dep-see, job's right.'

‘What's the teacher like?'

‘Nice legs, spiky hair, up herself.'

‘Have you got a pen and paper?'

‘Red and blue, and a pencil case.'

They did the crossword. Walter read out the questions and Margery answered as many as she could.

When she turned the peas off, Walter made the gravy and went to get Mrs Parsons. They came back, Mrs Parsons clinging to Walter's arm. He helped her out of her big wool coat and high red beret and draped them carefully over the cross-stitched antimacassars on the couch. He sat her down on her chair and pushed her up to the table. ‘Would you care for a small glass of sherry, Mrs Parsons?' He'd been asking the same question for fifteen years, but today she replied, ‘Just a little one, if it's not too much bother.'

Confused, Walter looked to his mother, who had stalled, a basting spoon in her hand. ‘Well, Walter, get Mrs Parsons a nice glass.'

He got the smallest tumbler from Margery's precious crockery collection in her mirror-backed crystal cabinet and declared it to be Mrs Parsons' Special Glass.

Margery served the vegetables and Walter carved the chook and they sat down, as usual, said, ‘Cheers,' had a sip of sherry and a mouthful of food and Mrs Parsons complimented Walter on his gravy and Margery agreed and, as always, Walter said, ‘Special gravy
for special ladies,' to which Mrs Parsons replied, ‘You're very kind.' Then Mrs Parsons said, ‘It's a shame about Mrs Cruickshank,' and so Margery had to explain to Walter that Pat had run away from the home. ‘She always said to me, “Kill me before you put me in one of those places.”'

‘Should we take a look?' Walter said, concerned, but Margery said, ‘Nar, she'll turn up, and anyrate, the police are out looking.' She removed Pat from his mind completely by breaking the news to Walter about the Plan for Independence List. Walter put down his spoon, wiped his hand on the serviette tucked into the neck of his guernsey and looked at the list. ‘Job's right,' but Margery knew he didn't understand what was written on the note, so she read out the things Anita said needed fixing. When she got to ‘take the bath out and put a shower base and chair in, OR, put a bench across the bath temporarily,' Walter rubbed his nose. He jerked his head on his neck when she read out number five and six – ‘move the handrails next to the shower so M can reach them' and ‘adjust the doors so that they are secure' – he stood up and turned circles in the small kitchen. Mrs Parsons put her knife and fork down and placed her hands on the edge of the table, glanced at her coat and beret on the couch.

‘She also wants you put smoke detectors on the ceilings.'

‘On the ceiling?' He circled, clenched and unclenched his fists, and Mrs Parsons pushed at the table, trying to shove her chair back, but Walter settled at the table again when Margery stressed that it was for her own safety, ‘So I can stay at home.'

He picked up his knife and spoon and said, ‘I'll drop in, have a word with this bossy-britches Anita.' He laughed, his false teeth perfect under his dyed moustache, ‘
Anita the Hun
, ha-har, how's that, eh?
Anita the Hun
?' and Margery laughed and Mrs Parsons stopped turning from side to side in her chair, and they went on to enjoy their lovely lunch and Walter went on his way, as he did, when he'd
finished his pudding, dried the knives and forks and delivered Mrs Parsons back to the sanctuary of her silent little house.

Sunday afternoon, Margery put things in order in her kitchen, had another nice cup of tea, started another cross-stitch
– Cursed be he that removeth his neighbour's landmark –
then ran a polishing cloth over some of Walter's trophies: Junior Featherweight, Junior Welterweight, Super Middleweight. Before she went to untie Mrs Parsons' laces she checked on Pat, found her wide awake but occupied reading the Street directory, so she handed her a vegemite sandwich through the half-open window. ‘Thanks,' Pat said.

She made herself a cold chicken-and-lettuce sandwich for tea and ate it while she watched the news, but there were no missing-persons reports. Before going to bed she peeped into the garage. Pat was sitting in the passenger seat, head tipped back and mouth open, snoring. Margery left a glass of water on the bonnet of the car, bolted the shed door and fell off to sleep in her cosy bed with Matt Monro singing,
‘Born free, and life is worth living, but only worth living because you're born free
,
'
through the pillow. After she'd slept on the situation, Margery decided to do the right thing concerning Pat, mainly because during the night her disappearance had been announced on the Magic Radio, Best Tunes of All Time. ‘Anyone seeing an elderly woman . . . last sighted in the Sydney Road vicinity . . . possibly suffering hypothermia from exposure.'