Scuba Dancing

by Nicola Slade

  ‘She’s just … just lying there,’ Finn said in a horrified whisper. ‘She looks dead.’

  Julia looked at Margot with professional compassion and agreed as she set their freesias in a vase on the bedside locker.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Not much longer now, poor soul.’ She bent to take Margot’s hand and spoke gently but clearly. ‘Margot?’

  There was a tremor on the little lined face that might have been some kind of acknowledgement and they hovered there, waiting to see if she would respond. Nothing.

  The staff nurse appeared and looked an enquiry at them.

  ‘Miss Clavering will be in about six,’ Julia explained.

  ‘Good,’ came the response. ‘The registrar will be around then and I know he wants to talk to her.’

  Promising to pass on the message to Rosemary they kissed the lonely little creature and made their way back to the car, both struggling with tears.

  ‘She was such a mad old thing,’ Finn said angrily. ‘Dancing about with nothing on when I first saw her, but at least she enjoyed herself some of the time.’

  ****

  Evening came and still no word from Charlie.

  ‘He only said “soon”,’ Julia pointed out when Finn showed her the postcard. ‘Could mean anything, so snap out of it. Are you planning to mope around at home on your own tonight or do you want an exciting evening over at the pub with us?’

  ‘Oooh, tough choice!’ Finn made a face at her, then gave in. ‘Oh, why not? I can always come home if the conversation turns to trusses and varicose veins, I suppose.’

  Later she regretted her decision but what was the alternative? Charlie had her mobile number and if he turned up unexpectedly he knew her haunts, such as they were. She might as well make the best of it.

  She listened vaguely to her neighbours extolling the virtues of their cats.

  ‘Such adorable little things,’ gushed Bobbie. ‘The little boy has taken to going over to Ursula’s house to visit her, bless him. I only hope Henrietta doesn’t see him and make life difficult.’

  ‘She isn’t causing any trouble these days,’ said Ursula, who was feeling incredibly laid-back now there was no fear of being harried from dawn till dusk. She had planted periwinkles and an evergreen honeysuckle over the air-raid shelter and the plants were thriving. She preferred not to think of the moral aspect, nor what lay under the flourishing greenery, though the angel referred to it on his occasional visits.

  ****

  ‘Your old dragon must be turning into good fertiliser,’ the angel remarked one day, drifting into the kitchen unannounced except for the now-familiar waft of spices, and a luminescent radiance from his golden feathers. ‘It just goes to show that even something evil can be transmuted into good in the right circumstances – being dead, in Henrietta’s case.’

  ‘Where do you come from?’ Ursula blurted out the question she had been pining to ask for weeks. ‘Are you just a figment of my imagination? I mean, the things you tell me to do seem so much to be what I want to do, are you my sub-conscious?’

  The angel gave her a considering glance.

  ‘You’ll have to work that one out, Ursula,’ he said finally. ‘What is an angel, after all? An incorporeal entity, that’s me, or maybe anthropomorphic is the word I want? Something to talk to like you talk to that cat now, and project your replies on to?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ She was astonished at her own daring – arguing with an angel. ‘Everything you’ve encouraged me to do has turned out to be downright dishonest: stealing those boxes from the shop; not reporting Henrietta’s death; selling the china.’ She gave a sudden shudder of dismay. ‘Maybe you’re not an angel after all! Maybe you should be wearing horns and a tail.’

  ‘Ursula, Ursula, Ursula!’ The angel assumed an expression of hurt amazement. ‘What a thing to say to a friend, when all I’ve ever tried to do is give you a helping hand. Still, if that’s what you think of me …’

  ‘Oh please,’ Ursula cried out as the radiance dimmed. The angel hesitated and looked at her guardedly. ‘Please don’t go, I don’t care where you come from or what you are, as long as you still visit me sometimes. After all, you’re the only person I can talk to about Henrietta, I can’t tell anyone else, they’d lock me up.’

  ****

  The cat lovers’ gentle eulogies about their pets were soporific and their voices sank to a pleasant buzzing in Finn’s ears as she sipped her drink and dreamed of Charlie, while her sister and Delia discussed possible new fund-raisers and the others chatted generally.

  ‘Had a good afternoon, Rosemary?’

  Julia broke off from her discussion about carol singing to welcome Rosemary who came in with Hugh.

  ‘Bliss,’ Rosemary nodded with a smile. ‘I feel so much more relaxed. Mind you,’ the smile faded away, ‘Hugh took me in to the hospital on the way here and I saw the doctor. He says it’s only a matter of a week or so at most.’

  Julia nodded sympathetically.

  ‘But could you honestly wish her back?’ she asked seriously. ‘The way she is, I mean? This is much better, for Margot’s own sake, than hanging on in that state, never knowing if she was going to come to, doing something embarrassing.’

  Bobbie intervened after craning her neck to look round the bar.

  ‘Anyone seen Marek lately? I left him a message about this meeting, but I haven’t seen him around for days.’

  ‘You’re right, you know,’ Rosemary broke off from her low-voiced conversation with Hugh. ‘Last time I spoke to him he was being very mysterious. I know he’s been worrying that he hasn’t contributed much to the fund-raising, even though we’ve all told him not to be so silly. I suppose he comes from a macho culture so he can’t help it.’ She looked across to the saloon bar door. ‘Talk of the devil!’

  ‘Lady Delia!’ Marek stood to attention, very trim, in front of the group’s self-appointed leader. He looked big with news. ‘Here, I have some money for you.’

  Taken aback, Delia held out a limp hand as Marek, very importantly, began to count fifty-pound notes into it.

  ‘There you are,’ he barked in triumph. ‘two thousand pounds, I think you will find it is all correct and present. Thank you!’ He bowed all round the group, with a very smug smile on his dark features, then sat down beside Jonathan Barlow without offering an explanation.

  Surely he hadn’t gone on the game? Julia remembered one of Marek’s original jokey ideas for a fund-raiser – as a Viagra stud – but no, he looked pleased with himself, certainly, but not that pleased.

  ‘Oh, very well.’ Marek listened with obvious delight to the outcry his actions had precipitated. ‘I tell you, okay? But you keep it under your hat, nobody got to know.’

  Finn jerked out of her daydream as she realised something was going on. In an excited whisper Bobbie filled her in, so she sat up and listened as Marek explained.

  ‘I have been bad about not putting much in,’ he said stiffly, waving aside the protests that greeted this remark. ‘No, no, is true. You all gave to the antiques sale, but me, I had nothing left. After my wife died I gave things to my son, then to a charity shop, so when I took my new flat I started clean. Yes, you say, so I helped at the fair – so I should, it is my duty same as you, we’re all in this together. Then I saw a thing on television about illegal immigrants and I spoke to some fellow countrymen I know of in London. From then on, is easy.’

  ‘What was easy? What did you do, Marek?’ Delia asked the question for the rest of them. ‘You haven’t taken to smuggling asylum seekers through the Channel Tunnel, have you?’

  ‘You think I’m scum?’ His voice rose in indignation. ‘What I do is not so bad, not quite legal, maybe, that’s why we keep it quiet, but not so naughty.’ Delia was looking at him with a glint in her eye so he hurriedly went on with his tale. ‘I found out about a money-making “scam”, I think you call it. So I married a young Polish woman for money so she can get British nationality. Very easy, very quick, say I do, sign here, tak
e your money in brown envelope, goodbye!’

  There was a moment’s stunned silence as the rest of the group stared in shocked condemnation at their fellow member then, as Marek’s initial jaunty triumph began to dissipate under their barely disguised disapproval, Delia barged in to bridge the gap.

  ‘Good heavens, Marek,’ she cried heartily, clapping him on the shoulder so that he buckled slightly, ‘what an astonishing story! And what a huge contribution to the fighting fund.’ She glared menacingly at the others. ‘What a variety of ways we’ve all uncovered in our fund-raising, to be sure.’

  Hastily-donned smiles served to reassure Marek as the others clamoured round him, postponing their moralising until he was out of earshot, realising perhaps that the moral high ground was a bit shaky in their own situation.

  ‘A thought occurs,’ Jamie Stuart put in with his customary easy smile. ‘Won’t this young lady have a claim on your estate, Marek? If something happens to you, I mean. Do you want that? I imagine your son, from what you’ve told us of him, would be less than pleased?’

  ‘Ha! So you would think.’ Marek’s eyes were bright with surprising malice. ‘So, this young Polish lady, if she tries to get hold of my money, she finds she is not really my wife. No,’ he shrugged in the face of their bewilderment, ‘when my Ivy died I did a foolish thing. I was lonely and I married against my family’s wishes, what they call these days, a bombo.’ Confronted by blank stares he frowned until he came up with the right word. ‘No, a bimbo, that’s it, a gold-digger. That’s why me and my son fell out.’

  He sighed and shrugged again.

  ‘He was right and I don’t like to admit it. But she found out I wasn’t rich after all and she went off soon and married somebody else. Only she didn’t bother to get a divorce from me, or me from her, so now we’re both bigamists. Do I care?’ He turned to Jamie and reached out to tap him on the shoulder. ‘You are right, my friend, nice thinking. I should remember this, so tomorrow I must go to a solicitor and make moves to divorce my bimbo. But it will be too late for my Polish one. She won’t get my money, such as it is, either.’

  The finance committee had been doing some frenzied arithmetic while Marek spoke, and Delia now called the group to order.

  ‘This is fantastic,’ she announced with a nod to the barman. ‘We’re now only twelve hundred pounds short of the total, and we have getting on for eight months to raise that in. Ah, here we are, let’s have a toast; it’s on me, chums!’

  As they raised their glasses Julia’s mobile rang.

  ‘Yes? Yes, she’s here. Rosemary …’ she held out the telephone. ‘It’s the hospital, remember you gave them this number as an extra precaution.’

  They all watched in silence as Rosemary took the call. They all knew, from her expression, what had happened.

  ‘Oh, Rosemary!’

  Julia was about to reach out and enfold her friend in loving sympathy when Hugh Taylor surprised them all by taking Rosemary in his arms and providing her with his immaculate, snowy white handkerchief.

  ‘There, there, old girl,’ he soothed, and although Finn caught Julia’s eye, neither of them felt like smiling at this English stereotype. ‘I’ll take you straight to the hospital, then you’ll come home with me.’

  The party atmosphere fell rather flat after that and Finn was wondering if she could sneak home, when she saw Jamie Stuart’s face light up.

  ‘Finn?’

  Charlie stood awkwardly in front of her, brown eyes contrite, a flop of dark hair falling over his right eye.

  You need a haircut,’ she said stupidly and her heart sank. ‘And a shave,’ she added, compounding the insanity, when all the past week she’d rehearsed over and over again her opening gambit when – if – he should turn up.

  ‘Uh-huh,’ his sudden grin made her heart leap up again. ‘I probably do.’

  He reached across Ursula Buchanan and hauled Finn to her feet.

  ‘I’m an idiot,’ he said, as he pulled her towards him. ‘A total, utter idiot.’

  To the enthralled delight of the assembled members of the gang he sank on one knee and took her hand. By now the entire pub was aware of something unusual going on and the circle of onlookers formed a crowd round them.

  Finn was aware that they were there, knew that both Jamie and her sister were watching with bated breath and that Julia’s eyes were bright with tears, but she stood still, waiting for Charlie’s next move, not wanting to upset the delicate balance.

  ‘Marry me, Finn,’ he said simply, stroking her fingers with his thumb.

  She looked down and met his gaze. He was wide-eyed with anticipation and small beads of sweat had formed on his forehead. The hand holding hers was shaking slightly and his bottom lip was tucked under his top teeth with the effort all this emotion was costing him.

  She stared at him and thought about all the other men she’d imagined herself in love with, right up to the faithless Luc. She thought about Julia and her dull husband and she pictured all the married couples she had ever met, none of them particularly shining role models. Even here, in the village, there was Jonathan with the wife Finn had still never met, nor wanted to from the reports she’d heard, and now Marek with his gold-digging “bombo”.

  But then there was Hugh, his much-loved wife recently dead, desperate to recreate that closeness with Rosemary, and there was Charlie’s own father too. Jamie had adored his wife, Charlie had told her, and had been worshipped right back. Yes, that was a better comparison, the likeness between father and son was particularly marked. She looked at his saturnine features, tough and vulnerable at the same time, and she remembered the fun and friendship and passion they shared in bed.

  All these thoughts swirled and scurried round her brain in a nano-second as she looked into Charlie’s eyes.

  ‘Outside,’ she said, biting her lip and rising. She ran out to the car park, sudden rage threatening to choke her.

  ‘You just walked out!’ she berated him as he followed her anxiously. ‘You just walked out and left me standing. I was out of my mind with worry till I got your postcard and since then I’ve been off my head with rage. How could you just dump me like that? You should have phoned, I’d have understood.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, taken aback by the storm of fury. ‘I just wasn’t thinking straight. Like I said, I’m a total fool.’

  ‘You think that’s it? That’s enough? That all you need to do is snap your fingers and I’ll come running? Give me some credit, you don’t think I’m that desperate, do you?’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said again, spreading his hands in a hopeless gesture. ‘I love you, Finn, let me make it up to you.’

  As swiftly as it had overtaken her the anger dissipated. Everything that had gone through her mind as they stared at each other in the pub flashed through again. No, I’m not that desperate, she told herself, not for just any man, but Charlie … Charlie is special, Charlie is mine!

  ‘Yes,’ she said into the tense silence.

  The pub exploded into cheers. They’d been openly eavesdropping through the open door and the champagne corks flew. The landlord needed no specific signal from Delia as Charlie dragged Finn back indoors.

  ‘She said yes,’ Charlie yelled over the noise and she laughed and nodded in confirmation. ‘She said yes!’ Then Julia was hugging them both, crying and laughing, and beckoning to Jamie to join in. He smiled at them but held back till the champagne was in sight, then commandeered a tray and four glasses and brought them over.

  ‘Here,’ he said, putting it down so he could take his turn at the family hug. ‘A toast to the newest recruit to the Stuart dynasty. Welcome, darling Finn, you’ll be an ornament to the crown of England when we come into our own!’

  The four of them drank the toast and all the time Finn was electrically conscious of Charlie’s taut body close by as he stood with his arm round her. A slight pressure of his hand on her waist made her turn to smile at him.

  ‘Let’s get out of here,’ he murmured, h
is eyes glinting with amusement and – yes, passion. Skilfully he extricated them from the celebrating masses and they slipped out, only Julia and Jamie aware that they had vanished.

  ****

  The distance between the pub and Charlie’s house was about a hundred yards and they reached the front door so quickly they could have won a gold medal for England. Upstairs and into the bedroom, clothes thrown on the floor, they fell into each other’s arms and on to the bed.

  ‘Oh God, Finn,’ Charlie moaned as he held her and kissed her hard. ‘I’ve been such a fool. I can’t believe you’ve forgiven me.’

  ‘Who says I’ve forgiven you?’ she struggled out of his grasp and grinned wickedly at him. ‘I only said I’d marry you, who mentioned forgiveness?’ She stopped laughing and looked very seriously at him. ‘We can’t have secrets, Charlie. Why didn’t you tell me about Amanda? And about your mother? It must have been hell for you.’

  ‘I love you,’ he said and that was all the answer she had for the time being as he traced lazy circles with his tongue round her nipples, then, as she arched with pleasure, he abandoned all pretence of restraint and thrust into her again and again, as though banishing the years of anger and unhappiness, taking solace in her welcoming body.

  Afterwards, as he slept, Finn was flooded with a vast tenderness and something that felt like awe, that this closeness, this recognition, all this was hers. I love everything about him, she thought, lover and child, arrogant and gentle, funny and sad. I didn’t know this would be how it is. I didn’t know I’d search so long for him. I never guessed it would be so worth waiting for.

  ‘I wanted to tell you,’ he told her later as they cuddled close. ‘I’d made up my mind but then Amanda turned up and I completely lost it. I hadn’t realised how much I still hated her till I saw her, then I wanted to kill her. I had to get away and sort my head out. Somehow it seemed important not to let you be touched by the whole stinking mess. What I had with you was so different – is so different – from how things were with her. I can’t believe I was going to marry her.’