Dancing in the Dark

by Maureen Lee

  When I got up in the morning, I must clear the bureau of the things that gave away Flo’s secrets. I’d keep the love letters, the photo of the little boy who looked so much like Declan, and the drawing he’d done of “my frend Flo”. No wonder Tom had felt so drawn towards her. He was her grandson. I recalled how indifferent he’d been with Nancy.

  “Don’t worry, Flo,” I whispered. “Everything’s safe with me.”

  At half past nine next morning, I asked Charmian if I could use her phone—I never remembered to bring my mobile to William Square—and called Stock Masterton to say I wasn’t coming in. Oliver answered. “Diana’s back,” he hissed. “She’s ruling the roost already.”

  I groaned. “I’m not looking forward to tomorrow.”

  Next, I called the solicitor in Castle Street who’d dealt with Flo’s affairs and made an appointment for late that afternoon.

  Downstairs again, the bureau looked pathetically empty, the papers I wanted to keep already stowed in the boot of the car, the rest thrown away. I dusted everywhere, swept the yard, pulled the last few dead leaves off the plants, had a word with the same black cat that had watched me before. Then I cleaned the kitchen and the bathroom, although they’d scarcely been used, but I wanted everywhere to look perfect for when Mum came. The flat looked different today, not just cleaner but more impersonal. I didn’t feel quite so much at home.

  I’d barely finished when there was a knock on the door. It was too early for Mum. Perhaps it was Charmian inviting me upstairs for a coffee. I rather hoped so.

  Charmian had been thrilled to learn that my mother was moving in below. I was sure they’d get on well together.

  “Gran!” I remarked in astonishment, when I opened the door. “Come in.”

  “Your mam phoned with the news this morning,”

  Martha Colquitt said grumpily, as she crunched into the living room in the crepe-soled, fur-lined boots that were almost as old as I was. She wore a camel coat, and a jersey hat shaped like a turban with a pearl brooch in the middle. The room instantly began to reek of mothballs and liniment. “I had an appointment at the women’s hospital, so I thought I’d come and look the place over.”

  “What’s wrong? I mean, why did you have to go to hospital?” None of us Cameron children had much affection for our grandmother, but it was impossible to imagine life without her bad-tempered presence.

  Gran was predictably bad-tempered with her reply. “I dunno what’s wrong, do I?” she barked. “They took Xrays and did tests. I have to wait for the results till I know what’s wrong.” Her voice softened. “So this is where she lived, our Flo. I always wondered what it looked like.”

  She walked into the room. “This is her all over. She liked things to be pretty.”

  I watched her closely. I’d never seen her face so gentle, almost tender, as she surveyed her sister’s room. “Take your coat off, Gran,” I said. “Would you like a coffee?”

  “I never touch coffee, you should know that by now.

  I’ll have tea. And I’ll not take me coat off, thanks all the same. I’m not stopping long.”

  “I’m afraid there’s only powdered milk.”

  Gran shrugged. “I suppose that’ll have to do, won’t it?”

  Her head was cocked on one side, she was almost smiling as she watched Flo’s lamp turn round. “I’m dying for a ciggie and it tastes better with a cup of tea.”

  When I came back, she was examining the drawing on the wall over the mantelpiece, which I’d meant to take down.

  “What does this say?” She peered at it closely, her nose almost touching the wall. “I can’t see in these glasses, and I left me reading ones at home. I could never get along with them bifocals.”

  “It says, ‘my frend flo’. It was done by someone called Hugh O’Mara.”

  Gran took a step back, but continued to stare at the drawing. I would have given anything to know what was going on inside her head. A faint hum came from upstairs, Charmian was vacuuming the carpets. One of Minola’s children gave a little shriek. Gran was still looking at the drawing, as if she’d forgotten I was there.

  I licked my lips, which suddenly felt dry. I didn’t want to upset her, but I had to know.

  “He was Flo’s son, wasn’t he, Gran? She had him by a man called Tommy O’Mara who died on the Thetis. He probably never knew she was pregnant.” I licked my lips again before plunging on. “You gave him away to Tommy’s wife, Nancy.”

  “What in God’s name are you talking about, girl?” She spun round, wobbling slightly when her clumsy boots became tangled with each other. I felt myself shrivel before the angry eyes behind the thick lenses. “What the hell do you know about it?”

  “I know because Nancy told me.”

  “Nancy!” The yellow lips split in a hoarse, unbelieving laugh. “Don’t talk rubbish, girl. Nancy’s dead.”

  “No, she isn’t, Gran. I met her the other week. She’s in a nursing-home in Southport. She said . . . ” I screwed up my eyes and tried to remember word for word what Nancy had said. I visualised the old liver-spotted face, the hot dark eyes, the long fingers clawing at my arm.

  “She said, ‘Your Martha gave him to me fair and square.

  You’re not getting him back. I’ll kill him first.” Her’s mind’s gone,” I finished. “She thought I was Flo.”

  Gran’s face crumpled and she started to cry, an alarming and uncomfortable sight. She stumbled back into a chair and lit a cigarette with shaking hands.

  “Gran!” I put the tea down, ran across the room and knelt at her feet. “I didn’t mean to upset you.” I was angry with myself for being too curious, too uncaring, yet I knew I wouldn’t have hesitated to do the same thing again.

  “It’s all right, Millicent. Where’s that tea?” There was a loud sniff, a quick removal of spectacles to wipe her eyes, a conscious effort to pull herself together. She looked embarrassed, unused to revealing any emotion except anger. Her hands were still shaking as she took the tea, though she’d recovered enough to grimace disapprovingly at the mug. She said, “I never regretted what I did.

  It’s hard for you young “uns to realise the disgrace it was in those days for a baby to be born on the wrong side of the blanket. The whole family would have suffered.” Her face was hard again, her tone fierce. This was the grandmother I had known all my lite. “Nancy kept her head down and Hugh well hidden for a good six months. We never dreamed Flo would recognise the baby after all that time.”

  She wasn’t sorry! Despite everything that had happened, losing her sister for a lifetime, she still wasn’t sorry.

  Frowning, she jabbed the air with her cigarette. “I can’t understand this business with you and Nancy. Who told you about her? Who took you to see her in Southport?”

  I sank back until I was sitting cross-legged on the floor, the heat from the gas-fire hot on my shoulders. “Tom O’Mara did. He’s Nancy’s grandson—or Flo’s grandson.

  I’m not sure how to describe him.”

  “Tom O’Mara!” Gran’s eyes narrowed. She stared, her gaze so penetrating, so intensely suspicious, that I knew straight away she’d guessed what was going on. I felt my cheeks burn.

  At the same time, to my surprise, her face turned parchment white. Her bottom lip quivered. She looked a hundred years old. She put the half-full mug on the floor, the cigarette fell in, sizzled briefly and floated on the top, but she didn’t seem to notice. She immediately lit another. “I reckon there’s a curse on the Clancys and the O’Maras,” she said. Her voice was dull, listless, almost funereal. It scared me.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, first there was Flo and Tommy.” She took a long, hard drag on the cigarette, and the end glowed bright red. “Then our Kate and Hugh. Would you believe they actually wanted to get married?” She gave a little strained laugh, and nodded at me incredulously.

  “Why couldn’t they get married?” I ventured. I’d nearly had Hugh O’Mara for a father!

  “Because they
were cousins, of course,” Gran explained, as if to a child. “It’s not allowed—least, it wasn’t then. Fortunately, Norman stepped in like the good lad he always was, even though he knew he was accepting soiled goods. Poor Norman . . . Until then, he’d worshipped the ground your mam walked on. He would have made the best husband in the world if she hadn’t spoiled things.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Gran.”

  “I’m talking about your mam being up the stick when she married Norman Cameron.” She still spoke in the same flat, dull voice, which seemed at odds with the rather coarse expression. “We told her Hugh O’Mara had done a bunk once he knew she was pregnant, else we’d never have got her up the aisle.”

  “Who’s we?” I said weakly.

  The and Nancy. As if we could have asked for a dispensation, like our Sally suggested. Imagine telling the Church authorities about our Flo’s dirty little secret.”

  She almost choked on the last words.

  Upstairs the vacuuming had stopped. I heard the front door open and Charmian come out with the children. I felt totally mixed up. My brain, which had been working so well the night before, could no longer take anything in. What was this leading up to?

  “If Mum was pregnant when she married my father,” I said slowly, “then what happened to the baby?”

  “I’m looking at her.”

  The?”

  “Yes, Millicent, you.” Gran’s eyes had shrunk, skull-like, deep into their sockets. She took another long puff on her cigarette, and blew the smoke out in an equally long sigh. “You know what that means, don’t you?”

  I felt myself tingle all over. “Hugh O’Mara was my father?”

  “That’s right. It means something else an’ all. Jesus, Mary and Joseph!” She groaned. “It was bad enough with our Kate! I bet the devil’s laughing up his sleeve at the moment.” She leaned forward, her eyes boring into mine.

  “Think, Millicent, think what it means.”

  So I thought very hard and eventually came up with the answer. “It means that Tom is my brother, my half-brother,”

  I breathed.

  “Millie,” Diana said importantly, “Will you come here a minute, please?”

  “Yes, miss.” I abandoned the photocopier and stood in front of Diana’s desk, my hands clasped meekly behind my back. June grinned and Elliot stifled a giggle.

  Diana looked at my suspiciously, not sure if she was being made fun of. She flourished a sheet of paper. “This property you went to see last week, the one in Banks. On the particulars you describe the upstairs as having a recess with a window. You quite clearly don’t know that this is what’s called an oriel window. Would you change it, please, before we run the details off?”

  The first thing I’d done when I was promoted was buy a book on architecture so that I could accurately describe any unusual aspects of a building. “I’m afraid you’ve got it wrong, Diana,” I said sweetly. “An oriel is a recess in the projection of a building. There’s no projection on the house in Banks, just a recess.”

  Diana waved the paper again. “I beg to differ. I think I know what an oriel window is by now.”

  “Millie’s right,” Oliver said, from across the room. “I doubt if I could have described it better myself The man sitting next to him at the same desk, nodded. Barry Green had only started the day before. He was taking over as assistant manager when Oliver transferred to Woolton on 1 January. ‘I second that,’ Barry said, with a charming smile.

  “Even I knew that,’June chortled.

  “Oh!” Diana got up and flounced into George’s office.

  She slammed the door, and everyone glanced at each other in patient resignation when we heard the sound of her raised, complaining voice.

  “Actually,” June said, “I’ve never heard of an oriel window. I just wanted to get up Madam’s nose.”

  “I must say,” Barry Green remarked, “that I’m glad the horrendous Miss Riddick won’t be here much longer. I don’t know what’s got into George but he’s well and truly smitten.” Barry Green had given George his first job thirty years ago, and they had remained friends ever since. His vast experience as an estate agent hadn’t prevented him from being made redundant when the chain he worked for had been taken over by a building society.

  He reminded me of actors in the old black-and-white British films I sometimes watched on television. In his sixties, with bountiful silver hair, perfectly coiffured, he wore a light grey suit with a slight sheen, and an eggshell blue bow-tie. His diction, like his hair, was perfect, as was his moustache, two neat, silvery fish. He looked the embodiment of a 1930s ladies’ man, but appearances were deceptive. Barry had a wife, Tess, four children and eight grandchildren, whose various achievements he let slip into the conversation whenever he found the opportunity. One son was an architect, his two daughters had given up dazzling careers when they started their families, several grandchildren were already at university, including the one who could walk at eight months and play the piano when she was three. He rarely mentioned his youngest son, who was abroad, but no one asked what he was up to in case Barry launched into another long, adulatory explanation.

  There was nothing subtle about the change of atmosphere in Stock Masterton since Diana had returned yesterday. I wondered if it was just my imagination that I was being picked on more than the others. If I hadn’t been so preoccupied with my own life, it might have mattered more. Diana wasn’t rude, merely loudly and forcefully officious. She kept telling people what to do when they already knew, offering advice when it wasn’t needed. She was having an affair with the boss and wanted everyone to know how much her stock had risen.

  “What did you mean,” I said to Barry, “about Diana not being here much longer?” Maybe she was leaving to marry George.

  “Because she’s coming to Woolton with me.” Oliver sighed. “George only told me yesterday. She’s got a title, assistant manager. I’m not sure if I can stand it.”

  “Your bad luck is our good fortune,” I said cheerfully.

  With Diana out of the way, perhaps I could get back on good terms with George.

  This seemed unlikely when Diana appeared, saying, “George would like a word with you, Millie.”

  “I’d be obliged,” George said coldly, when I went in, “if in future you’d refrain from upsetting Diana in front of the entire office. Everyone makes mistakes from time to time. It doesn’t help to have them exposed in public”

  I made one of the faces I’d caught off Bel. “Isn’t this all a bit juvenile, George, like telling tales at school?”

  “It’s not long since the poor girl’s father died. She’s feeling very vulnerable at the moment.”

  “So am I,” I said curtly. I’d scarcely slept for two nights in a row and was already sick to death of the situation at work. I knew I was only sinking to Diana’s level when I said, “It was Diana who pointed out my mistake first what she thought was a mistake. I put her right, that’s all.

  As she did it in front of the entire office, Oliver and Barry merely backed me up.”

  “Oh, is that what really happened?” George looked nonplussed.

  “Yes, George, it is.”

  “I’m sorry, I must have got the wrong end of the stick.”

  He became quite friendly and asked how I was getting on with the flat in William Square.

  “It’s a long story, George. Perhaps I could tell it to you one day over lunch?” I’d only tell him the least important bits.

  “Great idea, Millie. We’ll do that, eh?”

  Diana was scowling at me through the glass partition. I resisted the urge to stick out my tongue, and reckoned there was no chance of having lunch with George once she got back to work on him. She seemed to be pursuing a private vendetta against me.

  When I came out, June shouted, “There’s just been a phone call, Millie. Some woman particularly asked for you. She says her boss, a Mr Thomas, has a property to sell as soon as poss in Clement Street off Smithdown
Road, number eighteen. It belonged to a relative. He wants a valuation. I looked in the diary and told her you’d be there at two o’clock.”

  “I think I’ll go,” Diana stretched her arms. “I feel like some fresh air.”

  “They asked for Millie,’June said pointedly.

  “This is an estate agent’s, not a hairdresser’s,” Diana snapped. “It doesn’t matter who goes.”

  Oliver said sweetly, “Yes, it does, Diana. It might be a former client who would prefer Millie rather than another member of staff.” He winked at me. “Will you be all right on your own? Take Darren, if you’d feel safer.”

  “I doubt if I’ll come to any harm in Clement Street, it’s too built-up.” Female staff weren’t usually sent to deal with properties if a man on his own was involved.

  It felt odd to drive past William Square and think of Flo’s flat, as familiar now as the back of my hand, waiting for my mother to move in on Friday. Yesterday, she’d astounded me by announcing that when the time came for Alison to leave Skelmersdale, she’d have her in William Square instead of going to Oxford.

  “Is that wise, Mum?” I said worriedly. “You realise it’s a red-light area. That girl outside is a prostitute. And it can be very violent.”

  “I don’t know what’s wise or not, luv. Our Alison’s always had plenty of care and attention, but she’s never had much love. The change is bound to upset her, whether she goes to Oxford or comes to me, so I’d like to give it a chance.” Kate’s eyes glistened. “We’ll sleep together in the same bed and I’ll hold her in me arms if she’ll let me. As to the prostitutes, they’re only working girls who’ve fallen on hard times. They won’t harm our Alison. The violence I’ll just have to take a chance on.

  After all, I can always move, can’t I?”

  I regarded her doubtfully. “I hope you’re not making a terrible mistake. What will you live on?”

  “I’ll eke out the money Flo left so it lasts as long as possible. In a few years, I’ll be due for me pension. I might get a carer’s allowance for looking after Alison.

  Don’t worry, luv,” she said serenely, “I’ll be all right. I haven’t felt so happy in ages.”