Let's Dance (19 page)

‘Eat up, Mrs Burley, there's a dear,' he murmured. She ate, obediently. Doc Reilly watched her surreptitiously. She turned her smile on him, and waved the spoon.

Doc Reilly thought with a touch of horror of
Serena's large hands clutching a kitten. He shook his head.

‘You'd be better off getting another dog,' he volunteered. ‘One that barks.' The retriever, food finished inside thirty seconds, ambled across to him and put a large sticky muzzle on his lap. ‘No, Petal,' he said. ‘Not instead of you. Alongside you. So, what happened to the cat?'

‘George thinks a ferret got it. Don't you, George? I think so too.'

The doctor nodded. ‘You'd have to keep a kitten indoors then, wouldn't you? No point raising animals to feed ferrets, is there?'

George echoed his laughter politely. So did Serena, who laughed when it seemed apposite to do so. Isabel did not. The Doc turned to George.

‘Well, it's lucky something's guarding this house. Even if it is only a ferret, for God's sake. Do you ever think of stopping over the night, George?'

‘No,' said Isabel quickly. ‘George has his own home and he does far too much for us already.'

Oh, dear, a bit of an atmosphere. Doc Reilly got the clear impression he was treading on toes, curled his own under his chair and sipped his coffee. No love lost here, he could tell, and he should have kept his mouth shut.

‘Anyway,' Isabel continued, ‘Mother and I refuse to be scared by silly talk of burglars. Mother's never been burgled yet. Why should it happen now?'

Pride, the Doc could see it. The sort which might
come before a fall and would tolerate no interference. He admired it. Ah well, the nights had fully drawn in: burglars needed daylight and they despised the cold. Isabel was probably right. It was long summer evenings and school holidays like the half-term break, which was when he had last seen the kids; those times were the worst threat. In the meantime he had two dozen patients making strenuous efforts to die and he lumbered to his feet in anticipation of poorer houses than this.

‘Look after that cough, George, won't you? There's a lot of it about.'

‘Aren't you well, George?' Isabel asked with genuine concern. ‘I thought you looked a bit pale.'

He winced under her scrutiny, shrugged his shoulders. Sympathy from Isabel was not something he solicited; receiving it sent an arrow into his conscience.

‘He's very fine, aren't you, George?' Serena volunteered, nodding in his direction. It might have been a comment on his health or his physique, difficult to tell. Isabel followed Doc Reilly out to his Volvo.

He stood by the door of the car, reluctant to leave. She wanted to ask him something and he wasn't sure he wanted to answer.

‘Thanks for coming out,' she began.

‘She's doing well,' he said robustly. ‘Getting worse, of course, but still much better than most.'

She held the door. ‘Doc, you've been around for ever. Longer than me. You listen to things – people, gossip, I mean. You have to. Can you tell me what it
was that made me so unpopular before I left? Can you remember that far back?'

Twelve years was nothing; a mere fifth of his sixty. Out of the blue like that, the question took him by surprise. He had thought she was going to ask something equally awkward, but rooted in the present, like the true prognosis of her mother's illness. He decided on a version of the truth, delivered rapidly.

‘Nothing, really. You were just the prettiest girl around, and for a couple of years the most precocious. Your Aunt Mab told me she thought you were a bit wild, you know. Someone circulated rumours that you'd given a couple of the young men the clap. Anybody's for a halfpenny.'

She nodded. ‘So I heard. Written rumours? Only Andrew mentioned something about letters.'

‘Yes. Childishly vulgar. I saw only the one, mind. My son James, remember him? He got one. He was a stuck up little brute then. He's better now, I promise …'

‘Who wrote them, Doc? Who would do that?'

‘I don't know, love. Somebody jealous. Long forgotten now.'

‘Somebody must have hated me,' said Isabel. ‘And no, things like that are never quite forgotten, are they?'

‘Sure they are,' he said reassuringly, although, even to his own ears, his voice was a trifle hypocritical.

Oh God, whatever did you do with human beings except patch them up and send them on their way? She was right. Sometimes he felt he was good for nothing more than tranquillizer prescriptions and sick
notes. He could visualize the scene inside the kitchen he had left. Serena, touching George, the way she yearned to touch all men, both of them springing back as soon as the daughter came in, and she herself ignoring the evidence. Evidence of what? Forbidden affection? The occasional malevolence, as well as the occasional clarity and love in her mother's eyes?

Ignorance was a good idea. There were plenty of things it was better not to know.

‘H
ave some lunch, George? A sandwich, at least?'

Isabel had taken to feeding him, whether he would or not. A ploy, George thought, or preferred to think it, against the other conclusion, disinterested kindness and gratitude for his unpaid labours, something to compensate for their mutual aversion. As long as he could imagine that Isabel gave him food, even of the bread-and-cheese variety, as a means to make Serena copy him in the act of eating, or as a bribe to make him stay longer in order to preserve the peace while she shopped, tidied and did whatever she did all day, he could tolerate the generosity. If it was simply a gift from her to him, he could not.

George was particularly useful less for the heavy tasks, such as getting in coal, and more for the ostensibly light ones, such as persuading Mother to eat cereal and bread in the early afternoon without the deafening sound of the radio she carried with her everywhere, apparently as a means of blotting out other sound, particularly that of her daughter's voice.

George cleared his throat.

‘I could come back and sort of babysit in the evenings,' he suggested. ‘If you wanted to go out, I mean.'

Serena drew breath audibly. Understanding of the words seemed to come and go like a lighthouse beam. Isabel had long since concluded this had much to do with what Serena wanted to understand, and knew that to be a harsh judgement.

‘That's very kind of you, George. I'll think about it. Was there any post today?'

‘Nope.'

‘I can't get her to give me the bills,' Isabel went on, distracted by the prospect of a dozen minor tasks and Doc Reilly's words. ‘She's been hiding them. Do you think you could give any letters straight to me in the future? And I ought to call on the neighbours, thank them for taking in the post, should have done that weeks since …'

‘She's not well at the moment,' George said quickly. ‘Not keen on callers.'

They ate in silence. Sitting across the table from them both, Isabel felt like a guest. She had a sudden urge, horrible in its intensity, to slap both their faces.

As long as she loves me, she told herself with the familiar flush of shame, it does not matter if she does not love me best.

R
obert phoned in the evening. Was going to come and visit at the weekend, but things had got on top of him,
did Isabel understand what he meant? Life was full, he hinted: the baby was sick and the boy in pain from the dentist. Another time, as soon as possible, certainly before Christmas. Had the doctor called and was everything all right?

‘Is it OK to forge her signature on cheques?' Isabel asked. ‘Or is it a criminal offence?'

He hesitated, nicely alarmed as Isabel had hoped he would be. Envisaging his sister emptying his mother's account.

‘For the electric bill,' Isabel added. ‘I've only just found it.'

‘Fine, I suppose. How are you, er, off for money?'

‘Fine,' she echoed. ‘Everything's fine.'

Which it was. There was a bright full moon set high in a sky full of scudding cloud. Mirrored in the windows facing the phone, Isabel could see her mother by the fire, scribbling. TV substituted for music; sound for thought.

She wished Andrew would phone, without quite wanting it. She had a longing for the sound of words formed into sentences, ached for company. A fourth glass of wine seemed a good idea.

T
his time they came down the track in another van, slightly more deluxe. There was no laughter. Sure they had laughed before, but that was the first time and the denouement rankled still, despite their joking about it. Derek was wondering how long he would have to keep the auction-house job after this – for the
sake of appearances, couple of weeks he supposed – as he chewed a fingernail and thought about money. Bob had a dull pain in his back and thought about money. Dick's jaw was slack: his trousers were dirty and he fiddled with coins in his pocket. The equipment in the back of the van was the same as before. Derek was not wearing enough clothes and he shivered.

Three in the morning and the night dead. The sky was clear enough for snow and the track was like a grey ribbon. There was not a single light in the cottage at the end.

‘What do we do if she wakes up?' Derek said, still gnawing the fingernail. Now was the time his lies might find him out.

‘I told, you,' Bob said, his voice thick with impatience. ‘How many times? You know where the phone is. Unplug it, put it somewhere else and if the old dear disturbs us, we shut her in a bedroom and get on with it. For Christ's sake …'

‘OK, OK … No lights?'

‘No lights.'

‘Gloves. Don't forget gloves.'

Yellow gloves. Dick had got them from work. Very decorative.

They reversed up to the back door. Bob muttered how this was sensible, get in as close as possible, save on labour and have the thing ready in case of anything which necessitated a quick getaway. A giant in the kitchen with a machine gun, Derek suggested under his
breath, stifling the whistle he needed for courage. He looked uneasily towards the window where he had seen the fleshy figure last time, turned and winked at Dick. Dick's jaw still hung open. The memory had surfaced in his brain: the flash of skin had drawn him on, it was the cat that frightened him off. Derek had lost his pencil torch and brought another identical to it. He tried the back door, expecting it to be locked, ready to fiddle with it, because it was he who was best with locks, but it was open. That worried him a little: it was almost as if they were being invited in. There was always something sinister in other people's stupid naïveté.

The moon lit the kitchen through the big windows. It lit the sitting room where he went to unplug the phone, take it back down the corridor and stick it in the van. His training shoes were soundless, he was pleased with that; the yellow gloves twinkled like fireflies. Dick followed with the blankets and, without the aid of any electric light, began a skilful packing of the contents of a credenza. Bob it was who crept upstairs, checked that the bedroom doors were all firmly shut. One was ajar: he did not look inside, but closed it softly. There was within the gentle sound of snoring.

Bob had the list written on the back of his hand; Dick had the list off by heart; Derek too could recite it like a parrot. A sort of shopping list of what was going to be moved and in which order. Get the noisier business done first, get the stuff down that awful corridor either into the kitchen or the backyard, because of the bedrooms being at the front; load the light stuff as you
go along and the heavy stuff last. They weren't such a bad team after all, Bob decided as the pain in his back subsided and he watched them work in unison. Dick carried bookcases with the ease he carried carcasses, as if he had done nothing else since he was five; he stacked the dining chairs, got them out of the house and into the van without much of a sound. Then he set about the task of dismantling the table with the aid of ingenuity and Derek's little torch. Derek was good at this too, stacked up drawers from a chest, cantered out with them, never carrying too much or too little, never taking the risk of dropping anything. Ground floor only, Bob had dictated. Pity: he didn't half like the look of the grandfather clock on the landing. Maybe … As they worked, all communication was by whisper and signals. Thank God for the moon, which seemed to inspire them. Made them sweat. After an hour they were huddled in the kitchen. They had dismantled half a house. The bloody dog had not moved a muscle and they already felt like kings.

‘Fancy a cup of tea?' Derek hissed.

‘Fuck off, I found the brandy.' That was Dick.

‘Where?'

‘Back of that rolltop desk.'

‘Give it here, you arse.'

Come to think of it, the fool had been weaving a bit, losing the knack of tidiness, spreading paper from that vast desk all over the floor. Dick must have given himself an extra turn of speed and a stagger from half a bottle of spirits, glugged from the neck. His eyes were
glistening, just at that point when they needed a last burst of energy, plus precision, in order to load the heavy stuff. Bob had been cruising on confidence, ready to laugh out loud and shake his fist, but, Jesus Christ. He'd better stuff something else in Dick's mouth before he fell over. Or take something out. Dick in drink was a dangerous beast.

‘Make him sick it up,' he commanded Derek. ‘We got a long way to go yet.'

They dragged him to the kitchen sink. He smiled at them until Derek held him over it, making encouraging noises and holding his neck. He snorted like a bull and shrugged them off, snarling.

‘Gimme,' he hissed at Bob. Bob spread his empty hands.

‘Give you what?'

‘Gimme!' Dick roared. Bob put a hand over his mouth, a big, meaty palm. Derek pinched his nose. He thrashed around, knocking over a chair. Just as they lowered him to the floor, footsteps sounded from the stairs. Quiet, determined, implacable, coming towards them. They froze.