The Stillness the Dancing

by Wendy Perriam

Chris stared at the back of her curly blonde head. Dates, too. Perhaps Bunny had had a brain job as well as boobs and navel, and the surgeon had implanted a silicone parcel of useful information.

  ‘Everything in California is the biggest—the biggest ocean in the world, the biggest trees—you know, the giant redwoods and the giant sequoias—even the biggest strawberries.’

  Chris yawned. Swanking again. Anyone would have thought that Bunny had planted the trees herself, lugged redwoods and sequoias to the forest in her shopping bag, fattened up the strawberries, filled the Pacific in person, with a jug. When it came to oceans, she could quote statistics, too. Martin had told her that the Pacific stretched almost sixty-nine million square miles, with its deepest point over thirty-six thousand feet. Figures like that made her feel small and rather pointless, like a pinhead-sized crustacean stranded on a rock. Martin knew a lot of things, especially things to do with seas. She was missing him—badly. He had seen her off at the airport with her grandmother, which hadn’t really worked because the one inhibited the other. Grandma’s hug had been short and rather awkward and Martin’s kiss had no real juice in it. When she turned back to wave, the two of them were standing side by side, both silent, Martin in dirty Levis and leather jacket, Grandma all dolled up in a black coat and matching feathered hat, as if she were attending some VIP’s state funeral.

  Chris stared out at a giant palm, all trunk and no leaf, stretching up, up, as if it wished to avoid the noise and fumes below it. It was Martin’s birthday in two days time, and she wouldn’t be there. She had made him a cake, left him a load of presents, and they had even had a birthday session in bed, four days in advance, but it wasn’t the same. ‘MACDONALD’S’ screamed a billboard. ‘OVER 40 BILLION SERVED.’ Everybody bragged here.

  ‘Why do they allow all those horrid signs?’ she asked. ‘They ruin the view.’

  ‘They are the view,’ grinned Bunny. ‘Part of LA—like the freeways. You’ll see picture postcards here with great freeway intersections on them, where other countries have photos of cathedrals or works of art. These are our works of art, I guess.’

  Chris said nothing. If she had to choose between the Louvre and a fifty-foot sign for ‘DUNKIN DONUTS’ complete with 3-D sugared sample, she knew which she would go for.

  Bunny was flirting with the driver of a Buick who was cruising beside them as they slowed for some diversion. ‘I love LA,’ she said, turning back to her passengers. ‘You either love it or you hate it. I’ve lived here all my life. I was born in a hospital near Malibu, looking right out over the ocean.’

  ‘You live in the mountains, don’t you, now?’ Her mother had revived, was continuing the polite remarks. Her voice sounded puny, though, as if she had left half of it in England.

  ‘Yeah. You’ll see them soon. They’re stunning. It was Neil’s idea. He chose the house himself. I adore it. We both do.’

  There was silence for a moment, like a cold wind blowing through the car. Only Bunny appeared blithely unaware of it.

  ‘I’m sorry he couldn’t come. He was furious about it, too, but he was playing in this real important golf tournament and he couldn’t let his partner down.’

  ‘Golf?’ repeated Chris. She felt queasy suddenly, clutched at her stomach as the car shuddered over a bump.

  ‘Yeah. He’s a fantastic golfer, and he only started playing three years ago. I talked him into it. I play myself, only I’m not quite tournament material.’

  ‘But it’s … it’s dark.’ Chris tried to keep her voice down. Meetings were understandable, pressure of work, important clients, yes—but a game …

  ‘Oh, they’ll have finished playing now, sweetie. They’ll be back when we get home—all ready to open the champagne. We got Californian champagne, to welcome you both. Pink. It’s real neat. We often … Hey, look! See those little twinkly lights? Those are our mountains!’

  He wasn’t back. The champagne was chilling in the giant-sized refrigerator, but no Neil to open it. Chris felt numb inside and distanced from her mother, since they could say nothing to each other except in Wife II’s presence. Bunny was showing them around the house, flinging open doors, quoting still more facts and figures.

  ‘See that silk? It cost fifty dollars a yard, and the table top’s real marble. Antique. Well, that’s what the man said.’

  ‘Yes, it’s … lovely.’ Morna, valiant still, as they were whisked from room to room, entrusted with the vital statistics of every frill, flounce, knick-knack, ornament.

  It stinks, Chris thought. Anyone could see that. Bunny’s bedroom was the worst—her father’s bedroom, though how he could bear to sleep in it, she didn’t understand. Yellow everywhere. Yellow floor-length curtains, draped and swathed in layers with yellow nets beneath them; a yellow satin bedspread extending into a satin padded headboard which reached halfway up the wall and was crowned with a sort of three-D yellow topknot with satin streamers flowing down and fringed. Even the carpet was yellow, a sicklier yellow still, if that were possible, with little scatter rugs in white fake fur. The bed was huge, huge. A whole family could have stretched out in it and still had room for second cousins and hangers-on. Every surface was busy—vases of silk flowers in stiff arrangements, rows of simpering dolls in twenty or thirty different national costumes, Kleenex boxes in fancy dress, flower-sprinkled powder bowls in the shape of hearts. There were a lot of hearts. Heart-shaped cushions on the bed, a red velvet heart with a broderie-anglaise backing framed and hung like a picture and clashing with the yellow wild-silk wall; a heart-shaped nightdress case with ‘B’ embroidered on it in a second appliquè heart.

  Chris backed away. She could see her father suddenly, no longer tall and slim, but heart-shaped, cut out like a cookie with one of Bunny’s pastry cutters, from an offcut of red satin.

  ‘And this is the little girls’ room,’ Bunny was saying. ‘We’ve got four bathrooms, one each and one left over. I decided the extra one would be females only. Men always splash, don’t they? Half the time they’re aiming wrong, I guess.’ She opened the door on an acre or so of petunia-coloured carpet. Somewhere at the distant end, a toilet in the same unlikely shade blushed beneath its lurid pink velvet cover, which matched the covers on the cistern and the toilet roll. Pink fur mats fringed the bath and shower which had curved gold taps in the shape of outstretched swans’ necks.

  ‘Maybe you’d like a shower?’ she asked. ‘Or a nap? It’s your nighttime, isn’t it? Or how about something to eat?’

  How about my father? Chris fumed. So he splashed, did he? Couldn’t even aim straight. Had to be restricted to his own inferior loo, with a black velvet cover on the offending organ so it wouldn’t drip or …

  ‘Come see my room.’ Dean tugged at her hand, led her along the passage to his bedroom which was red, white and blue—blue swathed curtains over fake white wooden shutters, a scarlet bedspread piled high with plush new cuddly toys, an immaculate white carpet. White for a four-year-old and not a blemish on it! They must renew it every week. Even Dean’s toys looked as if they had been chosen to match the furnishings. Most were red and blue and so pristine shiny, they were obviously traded in for new ones every time they got a bash or scratch. That’s what her father had done—traded in his faded aging first wife for a dazzling new model, his drab and boring daughter for a cute curly-headed cherub. He was having second thoughts about the visit—that’s why he was lingering at the golf club; couldn’t face seeing her again. She would spoil his house, upset his colour scheme. Her Mum was right, as she so often was, curse her. They should never have come at all. It would only make things worse. She had been cruel and selfish and stubborn to insist on her own way, overrule her mother’s sense and tact. Now she was paying for it. Neil would keep away, reject them both.

  ‘You’re crying,’ Dean said. ‘What’s the matter? Don’t you like my room?’

  ‘Y … Yes, I do. It’s … smashing.’

  ‘Don’t cry,’ he said and took her hand again, sat her down on his little white ch
air with its blue and red piped cushion. ‘I like you,’ he said. ‘You’re my sister. I’ve never had a sister before.’

  The kitchen table was huge—almost as big as the bed. Chris and Morna sat stranded at one end of it, facing Dean and Bunny; Neil’s place empty still.

  ‘Would you believe? Your very first night here and his car breaks down. I guess you’re stuck with me.’ Bunny’s giggle was no longer bandbox fresh. In fact, she was looking pretty strained. Chris had noticed her constant anxious glances at the clock, her gold-ringed fingers restless on the table. Both the wives were miserable and it was all her fault. How could she have been so blind—not to realise that they should never ever meet, were incompatible like oil and water or fox and duck.

  ‘You’ve got me,’ said Dean, beaming at Chris and Morna as he stretched across for the bread.

  They had decided on food rather than shower or nap—at least Dean had decided. It was obvious he made the bulk of the decisions when his father wasn’t there.

  ‘It’s a do it-yourself-dinner,’ Bunny announced. ‘There’s never time to cook out here. I mean, why waste precious time slaving in the kitchen, when you could be in the pool or out at the gym or …? Hey, would you like a swim?’

  Bunny kept suggesting things, as if to compensate for the absence of her star exhibit who had broken down on the two-mile stretch of freeway which led from the golf club to his house—or so she claimed after a complicated phone call from the garage up the road. She had been jumping up and down, offering saunas, jacuzzis, even a foot massage on her latest pet machine. It had got on Chris’s nerves at first, especially as her mother was sitting like a corpse saying ‘no’ to everything, but with a fixed smile on her face which looked as if it had been crayoned on by an embalmer. Now she realised Bunny was simply nervous, trying to make amends.

  Dean was tugging at her sleeve. ‘No, Mom. Let’s not swim. I’m starving. We’ve been in the pool four times today already.’

  ‘Yeah, but Morna and Chrissie haven’t.’

  ‘Chrissie goes diving. She told me—in a wet suit. Can I have a wet suit, Mom?’

  ‘You can have a turkey sandwich just at the moment. Or there’s ham or cheese or pastrami or …’ She smiled around at the three of them. ‘Go right ahead and make your own. It’s so much simpler, isn’t it? Bread’s right here.’ She waved at seven different loaves, all sliced and packaged—two whites, a rye, raisin-bread, honey-bran, wholemeal and high protein; a cluster of butters and margarine—whipped, salted, low-cholesterol—plates of meat and cheese, and such a large array of chutneys, pickles, relishes, she could have stocked a supermarket with all the jars and bottles.

  Dean had already buttered four slices of the Super-White and was piling all the different fillings between them; a dollop of relish on every layer, a dab of pickle, a slice of onion, until the final sandwich was several inches high. He opened his mouth as wide as it would go.

  ‘A giant sequoia sandwich,’ Chris said and giggled suddenly. Perhaps it was just as well her father wasn’t there. He would only be disappointed in her, especially now she wasn’t going to Cambridge. She kept trying not to think about it. It set up such contradictory feelings—relief, rejection, envy of Anne-Marie who had got in and even won a scholarship; resentment that she’d wasted a whole year. She could be up at Bristol now, just starting her second term, if she had accepted their offer last January instead of just last week. Now she had nine months to kill and she hadn’t found a job yet to keep her going till the academic year re-started in October. Bristol was good, in fact, but her father probably wouldn’t know that, and he wouldn’t approve of Martin, that was certain. She was aware of a sort of fear, churning in her stomach, creeping into her throat—a fear of seeing him at all—made worse and contradicted by the longing. She was scared for her Mum, as well. It was bad enough her mother looking so much older than Mark II, with sort of staider clothes and hair, and her skin less well-upholstered than Bunny’s pink-and-white marshmallow, but what if Neil were downright cool to her, or they even had a row?

  She watched Dean dismantle his sandwich, pull out a piece of turkey from the bottom layer, shred it into pieces before finally discarding it; pushed away her own plate.

  Dessert was do-it-yourself, as well. The meats and cheeses were parcelled up in clingfilm, lost in the echoing cavern of the fridge. Bunny opened a second fridge which turned out to be a freezer, removed several gallon cartons of ice cream.

  ‘More!’ yelled Dean. ‘I want all of them.’ He fetched the toppings himself—ten different syrups and sauces.

  ‘Right, help yourselves,’ said Bunny.

  Dean piled coffee-pecan on top of rum-raisin, sprinkled both with nuts and chocolate flake, added two scoops of lime sherbet, awash in maple syrup, snowed the lot with desiccated coconut. He had left three quarters of his sandwich which had been tipped into the pigbin. Chris wondered if pigs were partial to peach chutney. She couldn’t eat herself. She had tried half a slice of bread, but it had lodged in her throat and scratched it, although it was the softest whitest bread she had ever seen. She was toying now with a spoonful of plain vanilla, lost in the bottom of a skyscraper sundae glass.

  Both televisions were blaring, the one in the kitchen and the one in the living room. There were four in all, one each and one to spare, like the bathrooms. Dean had his own set in his bedroom (a child’s model, with Mickey Mouse grinning on each dial). She had been reading about some survey in the States where half the kids interviewed said that if they had to choose between losing their father or their television, they’d keep the telly, thanks. Which just showed what a ballsed-up country it was. She would have given up everything (well, almost) to have her father back. Instead they had his video recorder. She could see now why he didn’t need it. She had counted three already, along with two freezers, two cars, one dog (pedigree), one cat (Persian) and fifteen different flavours of ice cream.

  ‘Do they have ice cream in England?’ Dean was asking.

  ‘Yeah—pink or white.’ Chris pushed her dish away.

  Bunny was on the phone again. There were four phones altogether, each one a different colour. Bunny obviously had a thing about safety in numbers. She could talk on the phone without even holding the receiver, just wedged it between her ear and shoulder and went on spooning in ice cream, or even clearing plates or walking round the kitchen. She seemed to have endless female friends, who all screamed and giggled at the other end. Each time it rang, Chris prayed it would be her father so at least she could say hallo to him. He hadn’t rung himself the first time—it had been some garage bloke reporting the breakdown for him. The whole thing sounded fishy. Perhaps he was still snug in the golf club, downing whiskies or postmorteming his game, or had returned to his office for a post-golf round of business. Maybe he was dead—had collapsed with a coronary the night before and Bunny dared not break the news. But wouldn’t Dean have said?

  ‘Daddy!’ Dean shouted, rocketing off his chair and darting towards the door.

  ‘No, wait here, sunbeam.’ Bunny grabbed his sleeve. ‘Let Chrissie go and meet him. It’s her turn tonight.’

  Chris gripped the edge of the table. ‘You mean, he’s …? My father’s …?’

  ‘Yeah. That’s him now. Go and say Hi.’

  Chris glanced at Morna. Her mother’s face was pale still and impassive, but she nodded.

  Chris stumbled out to the hall. Her feet weren’t working properly, her heart compensating by beating overtime. She could see a tall dark figure standing by the door, shrugging off its jacket. She dared not look up. Supposing he were changed—stern, sarcastic, old and grey? Two tartan-trousered legs were striding towards her, an American voice she didn’t recognise saying, ‘Honey, honey, honey, honey, honey.’

  She shut her eyes and let herself fall into his arms.

  Chapter Ten

  Morna closed her book, switched off the bedside lamp which was in the shape of a lady in a rose-pink crinoline, her lace-edged flounces blocking off half the
light. She threw the duvet back, smoothed the rumpled sheet. First she had been too cold, now too hot. She had got up at one a. m. for a glass of water, at two for a couple of aspirin; at ten past three she had started reading, was now halfway through the book. Impossible to sleep. It wasn’t jet lag—that wouldn’t last four days—more the fact that Neil and Bunny’s bedroom was just along the passage. If she got up for the bathroom, she had to pass their door. Did she really need a pee now, or was it just that ghastly fascination, that cruel desire to pass it, coupled with a dread every bit as strong? The walls were thick, so she couldn’t actually hear them, but silence was almost worse, left her free to imagine things—creaks from the bed, muffled groans of ecstasy, sudden high-pitched cries.

  She strained her ears. Was Neil awake as well now, about to rouse Bunny for a pre-dawn session? Impossible to tell from three whole rooms away. She did need a pee. She slid out of bed, groped along the passage to the bathroom, stopped outside their door. She had done the same the last two nights. It was crazy, paranoid, downright bad-mannered as well as highly dangerous. Supposing one of them came out and found her? She stood paralysed, listening to the silence—total silence—fighting a desire to burst in, haul Bunny out of bed, demand she leave immediately, restore her husband to her. Her hand reached out to the door handle, paused two inches from it. Bunny’s handle. Bunny’s door. Bunny’s home and husband. She was the one who should leave. She had never planned to stay here in the first place—or only a few days until Chris had settled in. Chris had done—remarkably quickly in the circumstances—so why was she still here, and not in a motel?

  She turned on her heel, crept back along the passage and down the stairs, feeling her way with the help of the banisters. The house was in total darkness, seemed to resent her disturbing it, resent her presence there at all. Everything conspired to make her feel an alien—the way she couldn’t find the light switches, or tripped on steps she didn’t know were there. Even now, the dog was growling at her from its guard-post in the hall—Neil’s dog treating his ex-wife as an intruder and a threat. Neil had never even liked dogs—and certainly not unmanly ones like dachshunds. She stopped where she was, fearing it would bark and wake the house.