Let's Dance (7 page)

‘Back where?'

‘Shops.'

‘No.'

‘Shops. Yes! I know what I want. I want to go back.'

‘No. Absolutely not.' No cooing in the voice, merely desperation.

‘I want to drive the car!'

Serena had refused the seat-belt and Isabel had failed to insist. She had no preparation for the lunge towards the steering wheel, Serena's ringed hand catching her face, the temporary blindness of her hat in front of her eyes, the screams emerging from her own mouth as the car rocked, bucked, slewed from side to side on the track, romped off the road and into the field. They stalled to a juddering halt. Serena's head hit the windscreen with a gentle crack. In the breathy, sobbing silence that followed, Isabel could feel the soft flesh of her chest pinioning her mother's hard knuckle to the wheel. Beneath her left breast, the fingers began to move like tentacles.

Serena began to whimper.

T
hey were out. They were out and Andrew was pleased; there was an enormous release from his own sense of not quite looking forward to this. There was an old car outside by the stable yard, back door unlocked, but no one in. Good. Andrew was tentative, but unashamed, of trespassing. The house remained as he remembered it, the outside obdurate, but a house which drew in strangers like a sponge drew water. He went into the kitchen. Same old stove, same old quarry tiles on the floor which sloped into the corridor that led through the centre of the house towards the relative grandeur of the black-and-white tiles spread back from the front door. He moved to his left, into the living room, remembered with startling clarity the fact that this was the first place he had kissed Isabel Burley, when she was twenty. How they had managed to make contact in the vastness of this room puzzled him for a whole minute. Maybe such things were best forgotten, as was the infrequency with which he had kissed women since. He shook himself, remembered he was here to look at furniture, not reminisce.

He sat on the vast sofa with the broken springs. It was so deep, the springs could be avoided: it was for sprawling and snoozing, arguing and making up, this beast. He was a sentimental man: he saw the surface of the cover was not entirely clean, a feature he was almost ashamed to notice in this pale, distinguished place as he rested in it. Lay back against the pommel of the arm, cradling the left side of his face against the right palm of his hand. He moved his fingers over his
face, testing the position of his eyes and bones as if he were his own lover exploring his features. She had felt him thus, examining the parameters of his face with the palms of her hands warming his cheekbones. Andrew drew his knees to his chest and opened his eyes. The skin of his palms and his face was suddenly soft. This was indeed a beautiful room, full of beautiful things.

Windows on two sides washed the whole place with light. Three hundred square feet, he reckoned, mostly covered with Indian carpet, whitish, greenish, with some faint design, fringed, frayed, faded, valuable and friendly. Sunlight bleached fabric, warm with age, the Knole sofa, covered with damask, similarly worn and soft. To the left, Serena's rolltop desk, a perfect, well-used piece, like this sofa, glorious wood nevertheless. On the other side, a fantastic rosewood credenza, a bureau, a chest, an assemblage of gossiping chairs by the west-facing window, each different, as if designed for an individual occupant. The chatelaine loved chairs, he remembered. One squat chair with a scrolled back, one gorgeous piece of curved tapestry which belonged in a lady's bedroom, one low-slung bergère armchair. They were married into a group by their sense of expectancy and the plump cushions that invited guests. Old tapestry covers, like the kind found in church, he noticed, not uniform but united by colour. Where had Serena found them? There were curtains which were never drawn, but which drew the eye, a fire-place
and, even with the chill on the room, with such comfort implicit in it, he wanted to remain. Carpet worth one thousand, chairs two, bureau three, and so on. He wished it was not so automatic to place a monetary value on things at the same time as admiring them.

Splendid rooms, surely. These were the rooms that gave the house a reputation for beauty, he thought, crossly. While all the time it remained essentially an ugly house designed on a grand scale without much sense of proportion.

He swung himself to his feet and moved across the hall to the dining room. Sat on a carver chair that had seen better days, as had the scratched and glowing walnut of the oval table. This room had the feeling of disuse; it needed flames in the hearth to encourage the latent warmth, a fire and a crowd, candles down the length of the table adorned at the moment with nothing more than two superb silver candlesticks and a vast grape ivy plant with dusty leaves. Andrew looked at his watch. Table worth at least a thousand, matching set of eight dining chairs considerably more. There were fingerprints and smear marks on the table, as if someone had stroked it.

He could venture this far, he decided, but he felt he could not go upstairs without someone to take him. Bedrooms were private places: people kept their secrets there rather than in desks. He could invade only the public domain, and even that was beginning to feel intrusive.

‘Excuse me, but what the hell do you think you're doing?'

He turned to find himself looking at a small, faintly familiar and very belligerent red-headed man carrying a stick in one hand, resting the knob in the other palm, flanked by a dog. The voice of inquiry was challenging but polite, although the position of the stick and the square-legged stance of the man left Andrew fairly sure that the benefit of doubt he was being granted was only temporary. The stick was not for decoration. Beside the man, the dog looked redundant. Petal did not bark in the afternoon.

‘I'm sorry,' Andrew said pleasantly. ‘I came to see Mrs Burley or her daughter. Perhaps I should have waited outside, but the door was unlocked.'

George clicked his tongue. ‘They've gone to the shops. What was it you wanted?' He still held the stick, reluctant to relinquish authority.

Andrew shrugged. ‘Nothing that can't wait. Only Mrs Burley's son asked us to look at the furniture, check the insurance. After that fire, you know.' He produced a card.

‘Oh.' George was disarmed, also curious. ‘She's got some nice things, Mrs Burley.'

‘Yes. Yes, she has. Valuable things.'

‘They're all old things,' said George, dismissively. ‘Worth a bob or two, I expect, but not much. And she won't be having any more fires. Not with me around.'

George decided he did not dislike this harmless-looking man with thin legs under the suit: there was
none of the air of understated threat with which George was so familiar, but still he wanted him out of the room.

‘I can fix you a cup of tea if you come into the kitchen. No one eats in here any more.'

‘And who are you?' Andrew asked meekly, following him.

‘I'm George. I walk the dog and look after Serena. Mrs Burley.' George said this with a note of defensive pride.

‘Who does the cleaning?'

‘Nobody much at the moment. Oh, Miss Burley moves things around, but Mrs Burley did most of it herself. She's not mad, you know.'

The back door stood open, so they heard the car above the sound of the boiling kettle. Music blared as the doors opened, then ceased abruptly. There was the sound of one weary voice, one angry one. Serena was framed in the doorway, crushing her hat. There was a lump on her forehead; her mascara extended past it into her hairline; she staggered slightly. George leapt to her side, clucking anxiety. She gave him the full force of her smile.

‘Hello, my lovely. I hit my head, didn't I?'

Andrew did not know the format of this household, nor its hierarchy. He could only interpret the look George gave Serena as one of tender affection and the glance thrown in Isabel's direction as one of murder, which Isabel, three steps behind and clearly struggling for self-control, failed to notice. Her face was blotched:
she looked like someone suddenly familiar with defeat. And she was still beautiful. Andrew forgot to notice the complexities and palpable tension of this trio as he stared at Isabel, last seen, how long ago would it be, a dozen years or more, the memory largely ignored in the interim, as if it could ever go away. The long brown hair with the oriental sheen, tied at the nape of her elegant neck, the perfect, slender figure over which she had agonized even then, and the huge, deep-set eyes which defined her face. A house is only as good as what you put in it: Andrew's father said that to customers. Isabel would give credit and dimension to the most unpromising of rooms. She could be hired to lean against furniture, like a model posed against an impossibly expensive car. Good bones: she would always look like an uncertain girl. The nose was a shade too long, he told himself; the mouth too wide. It would devalue her price at auction, but why was it that bidders did not stare after her in the street, and why had she ever let herself be touched by lesser persons than princes? Andrew could not fathom. She was edibly gorgeous, yet removed. Never looking at herself without anxiety. Never looking round and saying, What power I have.

At the same time, he could not believe how he could have been so hurt by something as insubstantial as a letter. He was one person for whom the demise of the letter-writing habit in modern life was not a source of grief.

The resurgence of fascination intrigued him. Isabel
Burley had been nothing more than a promiscuous bitch who had wounded him and others. Gone through half the promising men in town and chucked them away. He had thought he would no longer mind in the least about that, and had arrived prepared to treat her with the distant courtesy of the professional he had become. He would have suffered no pain at all if he had not dwelt in those empty rooms first and she did not look first so impressive and then so … diminished. While Serena, bruised but plump and glowing, looked as if she was already guzzling on her daughter's vitality.

‘What did you do to her?' George was asking, his voice dangerous.

Isabel did not look at him. ‘I didn't do anything, George. She did. She tried to grab the wheel and took the car off the road. I managed to get it back. No harm done.'

Then she noticed Andrew. I am always the last to be noticed, Andrew thought.

‘This chap says he's come to look at the furniture,' George muttered, dismissing him as Isabel's responsibility.

‘How lovely,' Serena trilled, assuming the role of grand hostess. ‘You must come to our party.' She was extending her hand and Andrew wondered if he was supposed to kiss it. ‘Do sit down, won't you? I think it's time for tea.'

‘I think it's time for brandy,' said Isabel. ‘Hallo, Andrew. You haven't changed a bit. You remember Andrew Cornell, Mother, don't you?'

It was a pointless question, but Andrew remembered Serena as a gracious, welcoming mother, smiling the extra-wide smile he saw now and which Isabel was coming to recognize as reserved purely for men. They were all smiling at each other. Except George.

‘What's all this about furniture?' Isabel asked, breaking up the tableau. George shuffled. He took a clean handkerchief out of his pocket, wandered to the sink, ran it under cold water and took it back to where Serena had retreated to a chair. He placed it lovingly against the lump on her forehead, pressing the cool handkerchief to her skin, keeping her head steady by a gentle touch on the back of her neck. The action was practical, a reminder to those present of their priorities. It was also curiously intimate. It made Andrew shiver. Serena moaned. Isabel sighed. Andrew realized he had not yet opened his mouth to either of them.

‘Your brother Robert,' he began. ‘Worried about the insurance. I can come back another time.'

‘Trust Robert,' Isabel said. ‘Full of long-distance ideas. Come into the living room. We all spend far too much time in this kitchen.'

You need help, he told himself, following the graceful curve of her back down the dark corridor towards the fading light of the living room. You need help in the way I have needed help. You have lost your pride. Somehow that reflection neutralized everything and made him calm again.

‘George does the fires,' she was saying chattily, rallying herself into some pretence of an ordinary
social animal, albeit one who would never have her mother's grace. The fire was laid with old-fashioned skill, he noticed. Newspapers, kindling wood, firelighters, arranged in order with coal on top. He now observed with horror that the marble surround of the fireplace had been painted white. The paper crackled in the hearth at the touch of a match. He wanted to laugh at the sight, wondered if she remembered other times in this room by the light of the dying fire, with everyone else in bed.

‘So what have you done for the last few years?' he asked, over-heartily.

‘Oh, don't ask. This and that.' Spending that inheritance of hers, he thought with a shade of jealousy. He leant forward, curiosity overcoming shyness.

‘And why are you doing this now?'

‘Because someone must. She needs me. I need her. I mustn't give up. I've never done anything else worthwhile, you see. So I mustn't fail either. I'm sure I can make her better. Anyway, what does that brother of mine want?'

‘He probably wants to make sure that the furniture remains intact, or at least properly recorded and insured. Photographed, perhaps. Your mother won't be able to stay here for ever,' Andrew said carefully. What did she mean she needed her mother? How the hell could something as stunning as this still need her mother?

Isabel looked round and frowned, suddenly determined. ‘I don't see why not. It's her home. Moving
her would be incredibly cruel and besides, how can it be done? She would never see the necessity. As for the furniture, Robert's welcome to it in the end, but it has to stay put for now. She finds her way around because of the furniture. Like a series of signposts, you see. The furniture orientates her in time and space, somehow. Do you know, I've never really noticed it?'