The Facts of Life (77 page)

‘And swing her around and doh-see-doh her left and doh-see-doh his right and down the end and up the middle –’

‘So who’s here?’ she asked. ‘There were a lot of cars.’

‘Everyone who’s helped, or given money,’ Sam explained. ‘There are lots of people from the village and old friends of Eddy’s from Rexbridge and London and places.’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘And then there are all the helpline people. And friends of Alison’s of course.’

‘So what about friends of
you
?’

‘Oh,’ he had to unwind his arm from her hand to tug open the barn door. ‘I don’t have many, really.’

‘Or do you know when you’ve got enough?’

‘Something like that,’ he said, catching her eye.

She had grown accustomed to the fading dusk light, so when he opened a huge wooden door she was momentarily dazzled by the glare from inside. Behind her it was suddenly night-time.

‘Drink?’ he suggested.

‘Sure,’ she said. ‘Thanks. Get me some fizzy water with a bit of something white in it.’

As he strode over to a trestle table that was bent in the middle from the weight of bottles and barrels, Myra looked about her and began to suspect she was going to enjoy herself. Like most stars, she knew that the only way of being guaranteed a pleasant evening free from autograph hunters and columnists was to call round a few friends and have a girls’ night in. Sometimes she had accepted an invitation to some ‘informal’ affair, only to find herself awkwardly underdressed in a crowd who had put on their most glamorous clothes the second they heard that she was coming and who interpreted informality as a licence to smother. Sometimes even friends could betray, luring her round to an ‘intimates only’ evening, merely to spring some hideous surprise like an ex-husband or pushy, chiropodist-to-the-stars type.

From the moment she saw two boys whirling each other around on the hay-strewn floor and was offered a hot sausage roll by a duffel-coated woman who politely called her Mrs Toye and refrained from prattling, Myra knew she was back among the civilised. She leant against a pile of hay bales and concentrated on blending in, glad she had been brave enough to wear flatties and come without her big jewellery.

There was applause as the dance finished and, just as Sam brought her a drink in a plastic cup, Alison and Teddy emerged from the crowd to greet her. Alison shook her hand and blushed when Myra kissed her cheek. Teddy, slightly breathless and pink-cheeked from dancing, grasped both her hands.

‘You came!’ he exclaimed.

‘Looks like it,’ she said.

‘I’m hot,’ he warned her.

‘So?’ she said, and kissed him, surprised at the heat he gave off when she held him close. In fact the whole place felt warm, from no source other than the bodies drinking and dancing, and the glitter of the lanterns slung from the beams overhead.

‘Did you have a good drive down?’ Alison asked. ‘We were worried your driver might get lost.’

‘My driver?’ Myra laughed. ‘I drove myself. I didn’t want some boy in uniform cramping my style.’

‘So you can stay the weekend?’

‘If you’ll still have me, and only if you promise I get to have a lie-in tomorrow.’

She took their laughter as assent and gestured to the prominent bulge beneath Alison’s tent-like dress.

‘Don’t tell me you’ve been dancing in that condition,’ she said.

‘Only the slow ones. We did the waltz.’ Alison patted the mound. ‘Just the two of us, and it kicked a lot so I think it’ll have its great-grandmother’s fondness for dance halls.’

She broke off, looking up warmly as Sam came over to murmur that supper was now ready.

‘Oh,’ said Alison turning back to her. ‘Do you mind if we eat so soon?’

‘Not at all.’

‘I’ll tell the band to take a break.’

For a second Myra fancied there had been something faintly aggressive, territorial even, in the girl’s mention of her grandmother. Teddy seemed to have sensed it too because he moved protectively closer to Myra’s side and chipped in. ‘The Guest of Honour should have a dance first.’

‘Oh but –’ Myra began to protest.

‘Just to warm you up,’ Teddy said, offering his hand. ‘I remember what you’re like. You’ll get up to the house, toy with a lettuce leaf then come over all tired and we won’t see you again until lunch-time tomorrow.’

‘Nobody calls me a party pooper and gets away with it,’ Myra told him. ‘One more number,’ she said to Alison, ‘and tell them to make it a
fast
one.’

There was a little flutter of applause as she let Teddy lead her to the head of the dance area, just beneath the wagon where the band were perched.

‘Two long lines,’ shouted the caller. ‘Boys on the left and girls on the right.’ The lines began to form, running down the barn away from where she stood opposite Teddy. ‘Or whatever,’ the caller added, raising a laugh, since in several places along the lines man faced man, and woman faced woman. The band struck up a chord for a little quiet, then the caller made the lines split up into smaller units of eight, and talked them through the first set of the dance, stage by stage, making the first couple of each unit go through the motions at a walking pace. ‘Are we ready?’ he called and, in answer to the yell of affirmation, the fiddler began to play.

Way back, when she had been a swan-necked, puppy-fatted protegée of Jerry Liebermann’s studio charm school, Myra had been forced to learn Scottish country dancing and accompany carefully groomed suitors to country house balls. In view of her pale complexion it had been decided to dye her hair auburn and launch her on the public as Myra Toye, chirpy Scots Lassie. The image failed, as did Myra’s attempts at a soft, Wigtownshire accent. She was relaunched as the latest chemical blonde, but not before she had developed a hearty dislike of organised country dancing. At the balls she had been to everyone seemed to take it far too seriously, bossing one another around in a thoroughly unromantic fashion and dancing with a po-faced glower of concentration which defeated the object of the exercise.

The dancing here was quite different, for all the familiarity of the movements. Onlookers and those waiting to dance clapped and stamped vigorously to the beat, urging on those hurrying down the lines before them. Far from daintily hooking elbows to perform gently skipping circles, dancers locked hands, thumbs up, wrist over wrist, and whirled each other so swiftly that they could lean giddily outwards against their partner’s weight. Instead of staying politely with the partner of one’s choice, the choreography seemed to require everyone to dance at least once with everybody else. Myra mischievously waved goodbye to Teddy as she was passed down the line, swung on the arms of a succession of men, boys and mannish women, ending with Sam. Then she had to wait, panting and laughing to watch Teddy do the same along the line of women, girls and wilfully feminine men. It was impossible to retain dignity, or reserve a hint of self-consciousness. She was soon as warm as her neighbours and tossed her cashmere coat off on to the nearest hay bale and her silk scarf after it. There was something hugely pleasing in simply being involved in the gradual working out of the dance’s mechanics. As two women spun past and she recognised one as Alison’s colleague, the transparently doting Sandy, she found herself clapping and whooping like a cowgirl. Someone took a photograph but she didn’t care if she was plastered across the
National Enquirer
. A shout from the caller sent them linking hands with whoever they happened to have ended up beside, and they formed three big concentric circles, each dancing round in an opposite direction to the next. Myra found herself on the outside, in the circle which had to move faster than either of the others in order to keep up. The tough-handed men on either side of her, who sounded like locals, danced in great strides so that she found her own feet barely touching the ground before she was tugged on. She nearly lost a shoe.

When the music, which she was sure had been insidiously speeding up, finally lurched to a halt with a boisterous flourish, people clapped the band and dropped mock curtsies to their partners.

‘Thank you,’ Myra laughed breathlessly to the men on either side of her. ‘Thank you!’

They just smiled shyly, as though whirling women of a certain age around a barn were something they did every day, and went off to find more beer. Teddy made his way through the crowd towards her, mopping his brow with a green, spotted handkerchief.

‘Hard work,’ he gasped.

‘Wonderful,’ she said. ‘It was wonderful. How was I, for an old broad?’

‘Better than me,’ he said, touching the small of her back. ‘I lost you.’

‘I think that was the idea. Shall we go eat? I mean, is it time for supper now?’

He smiled at her hasty correction of her Americanism.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Let’s go eat.’

He retrieved her coat and scarf for her, brushing off any straw which clung to them. With the opening of the door, the night air had slipped in with an extra chill about their overheated bodies and she gratefully took his arm after wrapping herself up again.

‘Stars,’ she said, as they emerged with the others into the darkness.

‘What?’

‘Stars. You can hardly see them in London. It’s never dark enough. Look at that!’ She pointed overhead to where the bright points of light spangled the dark outline of a leafless tree.

‘Do you remember that night you made us leave the flat and walk all the way through Hyde Park in the dark to try to find a bit dark enough to see some?’

‘Enough of that,’ she said. ‘I hate playing Do You Remember nowadays, in case I come across something important I’ve forgotten.’

‘All right,’ he said. ‘Truce.’ They walked towards the house under the swinging ropes of coloured bulbs.

‘Jamie liked the stars too,’ he said. ‘He liked to sit in that window high up under the roof, with all the lights off, and try to spot a shooting one.’

‘This party,’ she began.

‘Yes?’

‘I mean, I know it’s for The Roundel and everything but, well, it’s sort of a delayed memorial as well, isn’t it?’

‘I suppose so. Nobody’s said as much but yes. I suppose it is.’

She squeezed his arm. She tried to imagine her friends and colleagues throwing a barn dance in
her
memory, whirling around her pool, stamping out their cares in a giddy loss of control. The effort defeated her. She would be doomed to go like everyone else; a gloomy lying-in-state in a chapel of rest, a crowded burial, all schmaltz, TV crews and lilied trumpery, in Forest Lawn – where her last late husband had reserved her an uneasy eternity in a plot beside his – then the surviving members of Dino’s Club would probably spend a long evening getting discreetly pissed in somebody’s garden, remembering various insults and betrayals she had dealt them over the years.

‘It’s a beautiful house,’ she told him.

‘Yes.’

‘I always knew it would be. Do we have to go inside straight away?’

‘Of course not. Let’s walk around the side. There are more lights in the garden.’

‘Is there a way in from the other side?’ she asked.

‘Yes,’ he nodded, patting her arm and she knew he had guessed she wanted to avoid making anything that might be mistaken for an entrance.

They walked on, skirting the house, stepping in and out of the pools of light thrown from its small Gothic windows. It looked like an illustration to Hansel and Gretel. When she woke the next day she would be able to enjoy exploring it without all the crowds.

‘This is so strange,’ she said.

‘What?’ The house?’

‘No. Being here. I often thought about it. I know you think I was always wrapped up in myself.’

‘I don’t.’

‘You do, but it doesn’t matter. But I did think about it. Even before … You know? When I first ran into you a few times on the set of
Desire
, I asked Heini about you.’

‘I don’t believe it.’

‘I did. And he told me all about this place, and how your wife was a doctor and about how you’d lost your parents and sister and, well, it just made me think. I used to see you about the place and I’d wonder about your home. You weren’t the only one. I wondered about Fred’s home too, and Benny’s. I think it must have been because I was already so rootless by then. I seemed to live in trailers and rented flats and hotels from one year to the next. I don’t know how I stood it.’

‘But you’re rooted now,’ he said.

‘Not really,’ she admitted. ‘I’m more rooted than I was but, well, people in LA are always moving on somewhere. And now the earthquakes have
really
loosened their ties to the place.’

‘I thought you loved your gypsy existence.’

‘I did. I still do. Sometimes. Don’t tell a soul, Teddy, but I think I might be starting to feel my age.’

‘That’ll be the day.’

She stopped, turning in the patchy darkness, trying to gauge his expression.

‘Do you despise me so much?’

‘Not at all. Why do you –’

‘I don’t know. There was something in your tone just then. I – I suppose I’m as insecure as ever. Teddy, it’s very kind of you to have me down like this.’

‘It’s very kind of you to support The Roundel.’