Dancing Lessons (23 page)

What else have I had to do these days but think about things, especially the last twenty-odd years when I was there by myself with nothing for company but my chickens, my rabbits, my goats, and my books? I only moved out, Celia came and moved me out, because the place was so badly damaged by the hurricane, half the roof gone or leaking, the guttering to the tank blown away, the electricity cut off.

It was meant to be only for a time, while Celia arranged to get the house fixed, but despite her promises I have heard nothing further on that score. I know she sends money down regularly to Millie, who watches over things. But it is my house and I would like to have it back, I tell Mr. Bridges, just as he would like to go back to his. He doesn't see it like that. He doesn't see how I can go back there on my own, even if the place is fixed up. What would I do with myself, he asks. And with the state the country is in, how could I feel safe, a woman on my own? Besides, he says, and here is the clincher that really, really annoys me, it is probably costing Celia less to keep me at Ellesmere Lodge than to undertake the rebuilding of a house, especially down there in the country. “That requires substantial capital,” he says, his accountant self, “while keeping you here is a monthly outlay.” If I didn't know him well enough to know he is without guile, I would have thought Celia put him up to it, for he knows by now that the word
expense
is the one thing that will stop me in my tracks.

But I don't snap or show my annoyance; I haven't changed in that respect, showing feelings. I pause in my labours and I look up and catch his eyes on me, eyes the same colour as his skin, which is so even-textured, so soft I want to stroke it. I smile and look away. I say yes, in response to his question, I have thought about it many times. But I say no more, for I am not ready to share with him what my true thoughts are. I like it that he never presses me. So we just sit there in companionable silence for a while, me stabbing away with the needle again, he turning his glass round and round, staring into space. I often wonder what he is thinking at those times, but I am too shy to ask.

THERE'S A LOT OF
interest in me and Mr. Bridges, but then people around here have nothing to do and will latch on to anything that passes for diversion. A lot of teasing goes on that I do my best to ignore. People seem to think of us as a couple, though there certainly has been no coupling. Might never be. He has shown no interest in that side of things, and I myself am too scared to contemplate it, having been alone so long. Nor are my memories of lovemaking pleasant ones, for it was more coupling than love. My husband took me when he wanted and I yielded because I thought it was my duty, but the warmth, the love, the foreplay and the mutual pleasing, all the things they openly talk about nowadays, everywhere, without shame, were certainly not part of my experience. Our marriage was a dreary triumph of duty over Eros. Of course I could have gotten married again had I wanted to, there was no shortage of men making me offers, for a single woman alone is fair game for even the most unsuitable. Though there might have been mild interest here and there on my part, I can't say I ever felt attracted enough to anyone to take it beyond some mild flirtation. I was enjoying my freedom too much, the notion that I was—finally—in charge of my own life.

But I'm thinking that I'm missing something, especially here, for I am amazed at how all these old people are still maintaining a lascivious interest in the opposite sex, even the ones who can barely walk. It's as if keeping up the pretence is a bulwark against that dark threshold we are all facing. Why else does Ruby bother with her makeup, even when her hands are so shaky she can barely hold the mascara brush or the lipstick? She brightened up considerably when Mr. Bridges came on the scene, but now I think she is fluttering her mascara at the charming Mr. Levy. Even Babe, who has been married three times and has had a double mastectomy, is not averse to a little archness, though she deigns to ignore her chief admirer, Heathcliff. Poor Heathcliff doesn't stand a chance, as Babe believes the only marriageable man is one with money. That rules out our ex-schoolmaster. Though Birdie claims that teaching was a front and that he really is a Remittance Man. She had to explain to me that a Remittance Man is a black sheep from a good English family to whom they pay a regular allowance just to stay away.

“Oh Birdie,” laughed Babe. “They don't have such things anymore. Good families today are proud of their black sheep! It gives them a certain cachet.”

Heathcliff really does have that haw-haw accent and rather fancies himself, always with a rather rakish smile and lively eyes, seeming perpetually pleased as he slinks around the place, walking with a bit of a limp that is quite pronounced sometimes. He seems to pop up everywhere and he loves to hold on to people, especially women, and chat some nonsense in their ears.

He is a man who has shrunk. He must have had a large frame, as he is a bit stooped. He wears clothes that seem too large for him, as if they belonged to an earlier period in his life. His belt is drawn tightly to hold up his pleated trousers. Everything he wears is old, but of good quality and well made, though his everyday shirts of heavy linen or cotton have been worn to pale, washed-out colours. His face is quite handsome still, or perhaps distinguished, a large face that fits his body and has worn well, with regular features and startling blue eyes. He seems to have acquired a permanent tan over the years. But, as if to show that he has renounced schoolmastering, he no longer wears his hair short, as I imagine he once did, but long and brushed back into a ponytail, except for Sundays when he wears it untied and hanging down, looking quite silly in my estimation since the hair is stringy and white and he's balding on top. Every time I see him I want to take my scissors to that silly hank of hair, for he'd look so much better without it.

The thing about Heathcliff is that one can't dislike him, no matter how annoying he becomes, for one gets the sense that he is rather aimless and harmless and entirely without guile. Or even much sense, for that matter, he is so silly sometimes. How on earth he could have been a school principal is beyond me, though it is probably saying a lot about that private school, which, according to the Sisters, was founded as a kind of up-market reformatory for the rich to park their children who were too wicked or too dumb or too lazy to make it in an academically challenging place. He is the biggest flirt among the men, probably because he is the least battered and the most ambulatory, forever passing little flattering, and sometimes quite suggestive, remarks to all the women on the premises from kitchen to office as he hobbles about. Even to the good Mrs. Humphrey. He avoids Miss Pitt-Grainger like the plague, though, which only gives credence to Birdie's theory because she says it takes one English person to know another.

But Heathcliff is truest to Miss Loony Tune, frequently playing adoring swain to her nymph. We are sometimes drawn to the window to watch them sitting under the shade of the almond tree on the lawn, in canvas chairs, their knees unable to meet the challenge of sitting on the red blanket they take along and spread for theatrical effect, he playing the flute and she warbling away.

All the men actually salivate over Miss Dune, because she really is beautiful still and must have been stunning in her youth. She has a classical Greek face, all carved features, angles and planes and high cheekbones, which she is certainly aware of as she is constantly thrusting them at you, first one side and then the other, and huge dark eyes surrounded by long, unmascaraed lashes. Miss Dune doesn't have to wear anything on her face to be beautiful and can even bring off the short mannish haircut she favours, the white hair offset by her sultana skin, which is largely unwrinkled.

I'm not sure of Miss Dune's ancestry, she tends to give every thing such romantic twists that pursuit of truth is difficult. She does look Latin. Though Ruby swears she is nothing but a little hurry-come-up Coolie gal from the canefields. Although I'm not a big fan of Miss Loony, when I heard that jibe it was like a dagger in my heart: Miss Celia's remark about my mother all over again. I left the table without even waiting to finish the meal and took to my bed and slept until morning. For weeks after that I refused to speak to Ruby, though of course she did not notice as I hardly spoke anyway. I was angry, too, because I had learnt by then it was the canefields—and the people who toiled there—that gave Ruby such privilege, for her family had been big sugar estate owners.

Miss Loony spent many years abroad training and had an impressive concert career if she is to be believed. She has albums of clippings. She taught music after her return home, before ending up at Ellesmere. Why, I don't know, but she doesn't seem to have any family. At least none of them come to visit. She entertains us at the piano sometimes, though I for one could do without her singing, all tremolo and soulfulness and much writhing of her exquisite hands. Miss Loony is thin and flat and has no body to speak of, which ruins my fantasy of all trained singers having to be as upholstered as couches. She does give off a certain
je ne sais quoi
, as Babe calls it, and she should know, so that she is always surrounded by a little claque of those men capable of walking, sitting, or even just smiling.

I know I am being unkind, but Miss Loony is the most shallow, silly, irritating woman I have ever met. Maybe that is the secret of her charm. Even Mr. Bridges says he finds her charming, provoking the first of what I am alarmed to find are jealous twinges.

“SO DID YOU EVER
see your father again?” This is Mr. Bridges asking me.

I have to stop and gather my thoughts on the subject. I am ambushed by the question. I told Mr. Bridges about my father one day in his room when I had asked him for the umpteenth time to play that song for me, “Your Red Wagon,” and he'd refused. He kept saying, “No, I don't want you to assault me again,” mimicking Matron's words that I had repeated to him, holding up his hands in mock surrender, so I knew he was joking about the incident and I no longer felt ashamed.

This was when we had moved to another stage, me in Mr. Bridges' room, door wide open, nothing untoward, listening to music. He had a collection of
CDS
and a very expensive looking, very tiny player, the speakers no bigger than his ears. But the most astonishing sounds came out of them. He invited me over sometimes to come and listen, especially when he'd gone out and added something new to his collection, as excited as a boy as he handed me the spare set of headphones.

“Listen to this now,” he'd say, holding up his hand or conducing in time to the music. “Listen to that.”

I'm afraid he had to educate me. His taste was very catholic, so there were some things I enjoyed immensely and others I didn't. But it wasn't so much the music as the comfort I felt sitting in the armchair listening and watching the pleasure on his face. Just as I think he simply wanted someone, anyone, to share his thrill of discovery.

I couldn't understand why he wouldn't play the song when I'd asked him to so many times, or any of the blues that he had. But one day, when he seemed in a particularly playful mood, he said, “Okay, I'll play your song if you tell me why it is so important to you.”

So I told him the entire story of how I'd stayed home one Sunday hoping to get to know my father better, how he had played music for me and how we danced. Until Miss Celia and Aunt Zena came home and caught us at it. How Aunt Zena tossed out of the window my father's gramophone and records, smashing them on the rocks below. How my father was carted off to the lunatic asylum and I never saw him again. How I blamed myself.

It was a long recital, and I found it harder and harder to speak as I went along. I was drained when it ended and felt cocooned in the silence that fell.

“My dear G, what a terrible time you've had,” he finally said. “But you shouldn't continue to blame yourself for everything that happens in life. Here, dry your eyes.” He handed me a Kleenex. I blew my nose and sat there with my eyes closed for a while. Then I got up and left without saying anything. He let me go, as if he too was feeling the atmosphere in the room.

I didn't find his response very comforting, for reliving that day with my father made me feel no less guilty. Though in my heart of hearts I knew what happened would have happened anyway, if not that day, in response to that trigger point, then some other. But I didn't feel like staying in that room any longer. It wasn't until afterwards that I realized he had made no move to play that song for me.

THERE IS ONE THING
I didn't tell Mr. Bridges. I didn't think of it until I went back to my room and was overcome by the sadness I always felt when I conjured up my father. I probably wouldn't have shared this with him anyway: the black hole I fell into the day they took my father away.

Miss Celia and Aunt Zena were standing with all the neighbours in the front yard to watch the Black Maria drive off. I hadn't watched. I had crept away and found myself at the side of the house that my father's room overlooked. This is where Aunt Zena had thrown his Victrola and the records. Here the yard sloped down to the gully and was full of sharp limestone rocks swathed in a jungle of wild foliage—huge ferns and wild coco leaves and convolvulus. I had no thought in my head as I waded into this vegetation. Anansi webs wreathed my face and arms as I tore a path through the dew-wet leaves. I could see pieces of the records Aunt Zena had smashed, black shards on top of the rocks that rose above the plants, others lodged inside the coco leaves. Farther on, I found the turntable sitting on top of a rock, right side up. I forced the branches aside to reach it and stood there looking at it for a long time. I reached out my hand and gave it a slight push, which set it spinning. But only for a short time, for it was well and truly broken. Each time the spinning stopped I pushed it again, and I kept on doing that, over and over, until I couldn't stop. From it I was hearing a faint music that was made up of sadness, all the tears shed by all the sorrowful people in the world. By my father on his way to the asylum. It was as if I had to keep it going, this sad ribbon of music that was coming up from the turntable and running through my head, keep it going so that my father would never reach his destination. He'd keep on going and going until he came back round to me. I kept looking down and spinning with my hand and hearing that music. Until I could feel it pulling me down into this vortex, into this place where all the sad people were, and I wanted to go and join them. But it seemed with all the spinning the world was expanding, moving so swiftly, everything amplified. Tears were falling out of my eyes and onto the turntable, tears as big as the dewdrops that still clung to the coco leaves, for we were on the shaded side of the house and the sun hadn't yet penetrated. I could hear the sound of my tears falling, the drops speeding up to match the speeding of my heart until it became a solid wall of noise like a huge wave breaking over me. I remember feeling my bare feet sink into the damp earth, and I must have fainted, for when they found me some time later I was lying on the ground, unconscious.