Let's Dance

by Frances Fyfield

  Isabel went downstairs to the cellar, led by Mother’s writing. She did not check to see if Serena still dozed: the television sound was a reassuring murmur. Snow had began to gather outside the back door.

  Her forays into the cellar had been minimal so far; the gloom of it had not attracted the spring-cleaning fervour that had so polished and improved the house. There were the stone shelves she had used to store food before Robert’s visit with his family: that, as far as she was concerned, was the major use to which the cellar had been put in party-giving days. It had been the anteroom of parties, beer and wine kept in there, boxes for glasses, large dishes that had no use except when feeding a multitude. Serena’s liking for cooking extended to highly decorated mass catering where attention to detail in the cooking was less important than the finished look of a buffet where food would only be snatched by chattering guests. In the first room, where a cobweb-clad bulb illuminated brick walls, there was nothing but junk: two boxes of Christmas decorations, the cheese press, empty bottles, curtains and old blankets otherwise used as floor covers for painters and decorators. Broken chairs. There was a door from the front cellar to a further room at the back. Not a secret place: the door was always open on account of being impossible to shut, but she had never ventured there where the light scarcely reached. Not for the sake of finding more rubbish.

  The hinge creaked in protest. There was a small window, set into the base of the house, source of a sudden blast of air and giving a surprising and comforting illumination from the whitening world outside. Not enough to see much more than the dim outline of more broken objects. There was nothing that announced itself as a chest of belongings that would reveal either treasures or answers to God knows what. Isabel shoved a hand through her long, lank hair. It was corny being down in a cellar looking for something which those thorough burglars were unlikely to have missed.

  She moved back to the relative familiarity of the first room, stirred the old painting clothes with her foot. Strange, she seemed to remember there had been more of these once, and they had been neatly folded. She had looked, in the early days, to see if there was anything worth retrieving. Some impulse of automatic tidiness made her pick one up and begin to fold it. The blanket smelled of turpentine. She halfway liked it down here. The cellar was not a sinister place: it was an extra pantry, no more nor less, full of clean, cold air, as if the damp that made the steps shine penetrated no further. The silence was soothing.

  Something dropped from the blanket. Oblong, shiny, black. Familiar. A dictaphone. She bent to pick it up at the same moment that the door above her slammed shut. She froze. There was no preliminary to this sudden sound, no footsteps. Then only a slight hesitation before, one by one, the bolts went home and the light went out. Isabel raced up the slippery steps, skidded, fell, clawing at the walls, landed on her hip halfway up. Staring upwards, all she could see was the frame of the door outlined by the light from the kitchen. She scrambled up again, carefully this time, until she was behind the door, kicking it with one foot after another until both feet were sore. There was no sound whatever from the other side. Isabel felt an absurd desire to hit the wood with her head, instead pounded it with the heels of her hands. Silence. Not even a whisper of breath. Then the presence of the dog, snuffling round the doorframe, whimpering in protest, until, in a burst of sound so close it was shocking, there was music. Loud music, fit to drive away devils, big-band sound, inviting someone to dance.

  ‘Mummy!’ Isabel screamed. The scream became a wail. ‘Mummy, Mummy, Mummy!’

  George envied the warmth he could see through the windows. It was no fun camping in a car, sheltered and hidden in the furthest outhouse, but at least it was quiet. Couldn’t go on indefinitely, though, not with this snow. The belfry of the church was better, so easily accessible it made him wonder why others did not use it all the time. It was where he would have retired later tonight, but the road was dangerous now.

  There were many reasons he had given himself for watching as he did, none of them complete. Underlying them all was the pull of the place, like a hawser to a ship which strained to escape a harbour wall in uneasy seas. Then there was the fact that he must hide somewhere. Indifference to whether or not he had killed Derek did not stop him being terrified of the possible consequences, nor was the terror equal to the shame. Prison walls, crowds – he would rather die of cold first. Then there was her, the mistress of his celibate heart, whom he could not leave. Impossible to try, impossible to consider. She was in danger, poor lamb, far worse than his own. She was imprisoned by a girl who would hit her, abuse her, had done so already, the author of all her misfortunes, and his own.

  Even George knew, as he painted lurid pictures of his own muddled motives, that there was something slightly wrong with the scenario: it was Isabel, after all, who had made some attempt to defend him and he was grudgingly grateful for that, but it was also she who blacked her mother’s eye, looked at her with that weary contempt, pushed her about the house and threw her clothes in the fire. People were always locking their doors against the world when the danger really came from within. Serena looked so tranquil, asleep in her chair, so innocent.

  But now what was she doing? Suddenly nimble, radio in one hand, appearing in the kitchen where he had seen Isabel descend the cellar steps, purposeful. Shifting the dog away from its station by the open cellar door by kicking it roughly, shutting the door, taking a breath, fastening the bolts. He could not hear, but he could feel the bolts, imagine the sound heard from below. Look, Mrs Burley, my lovely, he found himself saying, this is not quite fair. Very cold down that cellar. You might not like that child of yours, but it strikes me she’s all you’ve got, and if you hurt her they’ll take you away. She isn’t so bad, is she? He heard himself pose the question about the hated Isabel and it shocked him. Perhaps it had been lurking there all the time, perhaps the cold had got into his bones, perhaps it was a sudden and complete empathy with someone, anyone, under lock and key. That was a terrible sensation: terrible.

  The snow was gentler now, a steady fall of delicate flakes as he moved round the side of the house and stood a few feet distant from the site of the little cellar window, almost obscured even without snow. He willed Isabel to think of it. If he had managed to crawl in there, then she, lithe, agile thing she was, could manage to get out; he remembered the way her body could twist and turn. He stood, oblivious to the cold and his icy feet, which he had tried to keep dry, concentrating his mind, trying to influence hers. Lift the window towards you, he said, pull it out; it’s rotted away from the wall. If you were a thief, you would know exactly what to do. There’s a way out, silly girl, find it. Furtively, he ran there. Moved the snow, tugged, ran back.

  The music faded away, along with shuffling, triumphant footsteps, moving in time with a waltz. The dog remained against the door. Isabel could hear the animal breathe, fancied she might even feel the warmth of her if she sat with her back pressed against the wood. She tried, but the step was cold. The dog whimpered, and that was a comfort. Isabel put her head between her knees and wept for the mummy who was not there. She could have been ten years old all over again.

  Mummy had left the frame of light around the door. Kind of her, so kind. For a minute Isabel almost succumbed to the same hysteria she recalled following the departure of the burglars, felt again that revolting sensation in the mouth, the helpless humiliation. She could sit in this cellar and laugh herself warm. No, this was incarceration, not violation. Survivors choose survival, Mab had said, until they have no choice.

  She was standing now, with her arms across her chest. She could feel her knuckles supporting her bosom. She took her pulse; too fast but getting slower. A sign of recovery. But I am a damaged bird, trapped in a cage. Not bird as in bimbo, bird as in dark-feathered crow, with wings, and beak, capable of survival. Why does she do this to me?

  Only the curious survive, said Mab. Isabel touched the wall surrounding the door. At this level, it felt dusty, but not chill. Perhaps
it was here George had spent a night, or more, whispering to the dog once he had slipped through the kitchen. The dog would stay there all night. She had never been kind enough to the dog, who had been her idea in the first place. Dogs took a long time to die, bitches longer.

  How long would she take, in the absence of any surplus flesh? Why does she do this to me? It is nothing as simple as hatred.

  There was greater warmth by the door, but it was still cold, with the whole weight of the house pressing down on top of her. No one would arrive in the morning. She would have to preserve enough energy to shout in the afternoon, or the evening, unless Mother relented. Which she would not. Isabel tried to talk to the dog; the response was anxious snuffling. Keep warm, then. Terror feeds on paralysis. Move.

  The echo of the fading music remained in her mind; along with school dancing lessons – not the balletic kind but the enforced tuition in how to do the waltz, the quickstep and two Scottish dances, redundant now for most social occasions. Isabel descended the steps again. She put the dictaphone on a stone shelf, safely, and she could feel to pick up one of the decorating sheets and fling it round her shoulders like a stole. She remembered her mother’s garments, silk stockings and all, as she moved across the cellar floor like a person on a very small, uneven dance floor, controlling a reluctant partner. Slow, slow, quick, slow, that was it; move aside, please. I am the most beautiful girl in the room. Isabel could remember an eightsome reel, the Gay Gordons and the Viennese waltz. Her mother would have danced them better, in better clothes. The air was cold against the skin. Why should she, generous soul as once was, do this to me? Amazing, she must have been, in her evening gowns.

  The dancing grew more hectic, then slowed when the sweat hit her eyes. Blinking it away, Isabel realized that the darkness had been an illusion. The detritus stored was all dimly visible. Dancing was comfort; it had the effect of blocking thought and provoking it. There was light in this darkness. There was the window and George, not a man of stealth, might have used that rather than the door. Thought had acquired her mother’s rhythms. Slow. quick, quick, quick.

  Took her time, she did. Ages and ages until he saw her slithering out, black against the white, clutching at the ivy on the base of the wall, hands pink, her face a pale blur. George wanted to cheer, restrained himself, followed her as she stumbled back across the route he had already followed, her arms hugging herself. At that point he would not even have minded if she had seen him, but she was hellbent, noticing nothing, not even the footsteps already partially obscured but still visible. She was a brave brute, really.

  He was several yards behind when she reached the kitchen door, peered though the window. Serena had gone to bed: the dog pawed at the inside of the door, for once barking madly. No good waiting there, my girl, neither of them can let you in. Isabel moved down the contours of the house, first invisible, then visible, punching the glass on the french windows with her fist wrapped inside her sweater; she was going to hurt herself getting through there. Big panes of glass, tinkling. He winced.

  George had seen the burglar-alarm box on the wall and suddenly remembered it. The house might suddenly reverberate with sound, but it did not. She was, in a manner of speaking, safe inside, probably, if she had a thought left in her head, turning it off. He felt in an odd sense almost triumphant for her. That was a cruel thing to do, Mrs Burley, darling: you mustn’t do it again.

  Perhaps Isabel would go upstairs and hit the old dear. No, he did not really think that, could not, somehow, imagine it. Hitting people came from heat; it was not something done by a body shivering with cold. There were lights in the kitchen now. She might let the dog out, and the dog might run towards him.

  George went back to the car. The snow sighed into drifts and ceased to fall. The silence was the way he had once liked it.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  It was the action of climbing back into the house, standing still in the sudden warmth and listening to her own heartbeat, which told Isabel the truth of the situation. The panic, the cathartic sound of breaking glass, the onset of pain which came with the heat from the dying fire, the contrast between life out there and life in here, the futility of screaming into silence, all revealed to her what she was in this house. In her mother’s eyes she was, quite simply, an intruder, with no more business on the premises than any burglar. A burglar was preferable; a burglar had discernible, even admirable, motives. He simply wanted surplus things, things which were going begging. His needs were simple: it was the demands and expectations of a daughter that were outrageous. There was no particular dislike involved. Serena did not have love left for anyone who carried all those obligations of blood. She was not rationing it; it was not there to be rationed. There was no malice, simply a vacuum. Isabel had the utter calmness of the survivor, coupled with a crazy desire to laugh. If it were me apprehending an intruder, she thought, I might lock them out of the way, let them grow cold or hot, deal with the problem in the morning. If I remembered. But then, if I were mad, I might not remember; even less would I care who they were. I would not pity anyone who destroyed my peace and privacy.

  My mother might have been locking out the nuisancy ghost of the cat.

  It had been, in a fierce kind of way, sweet out there in the snow, which had sunk into her indoor clothes. Fear created its own perspective; the release of it brought a dizzying clarity of vision and the opposite of fear. When Isabel opened the back door for the dog, she nearly envied her brief, lazy, leg-raising interlude in the snow. Petal hesitated in the yard, sniffing, reluctant to return, but, as always, followed the stronger instinct: to obey shouted orders. A little like myself, Isabel told her, touching with still-cold fingers the warm ruffle at the back of her neck. Bum life for a bitch.

  Finding herself on the brink of understanding was fine, but it made no difference to the next step. A reluctance to catch the train in the morning in order to get to a job she did not like did not alter the necessity of stepping aboard the carriage. Isabel the burglar went upstairs, as she was obliged to do, whatever Serena had done to her. Because it was necessary.

  Do you love me, Mummy? No, of course not. Why on earth should you? But I loved you. I just didn’t realize you had become the child, that’s all. I was asking for the moon and no one owns that.

  Serena slept, her profile lit by the bedside lamp with its paper shade so browned and frayed by clumsy handling, the survival of it was miraculous. And how long was it since she had stopped using the right bulb, unable to differentiate between one hundred watt and sixty? The curved lines of the lampshade beams stood out like the veins in a wrist, the parchment was as pock-marked as Serena’s brown-spotted skin; the two could have married into a colour scheme. White sheets, a face furrowed against the pillow, all of it sloping into the pristine cover, leaving on the one side a profile like a skull, under it the bulk of facial flesh. One hand was under the pillow, the other arm held the blanket close to her chest. In repose she was as beautiful as living daylight, the hair abundant curls of luxuriant grey. No rollers tonight. Her eyes were wet, blinked open and then closed again, the moisture making the pouched skin beneath shine like dusty leaves in rain. If there was any idea in her mind that she might have killed, humiliated, terrified this daughter of her flesh, there was no sign in this innocent sleep. There might have been no knowledge either. Isabel could not love this lump of body and skin, but neither could she hate it.

  Her position looked less than comfortable, twisted somehow in slumber so that she sprawled all over the bed at an awkward angle which Isabel wanted to straighten up. She stopped herself. Mother, Serena, whatever this stranger was named, could sleep in whatever position she pleased until she met the undertaker. Or whatever God it was she may have worshipped. I do not know you, Ma, I do not know the first thing about you, not even the way you sleep.

  Her right palm was extended over Serena’s neck, fingers flexing, twitching. There was an instinct to strangle her mother, as well as to stroke. Place long, thin fingers on that fat
ty neck, feel free to slice into the folds over the larynx, end that life. She could have killed Serena for her single crime of not knowing how to love her.

  Blood fell on to the pillow. Isabel’s numb fingers were webbed with blood which hung in icicles from tiny lacerations not yet discovered, pumping indoors, frozen outside. For a whole minute, she let the blood drop on to her mother’s forehead, where it lay like bright red pebbles before shifting into rivulets along the deep-set lines of her brow. Isabel regarded the blood with disinterested fascination. She sat by the side of the bed until some sense of survival made her raise her arms, reverse this flow. It was a strange way to pray, arms straining out of sockets like this. She linked her fingers, stretched; drops of blood fell on to her hair, mess, more mess.

  Serena opened her eyes again, sightless blue. ‘Please,’ she murmured. ‘Please. Let me go.’

  The eyes closed slowly. Isabel sighed.

  ‘Don’t worry, darling. Love where you love. I know it isn’t me. It isn’t your fault you are what you are.’ She leaned closer. ‘And, by the way, George is here somewhere. He left you a message. Lots of love, get your rest.’

  Her mother lay sleeping, bloodied. They did this, Isabel remembered, to the huntsman who has caught his first stag.