There Should Be More Dancing (8 page)

It took a long time for Kevin to open his door. In the morning light his eyes were bloodshot and his moustache unkempt. ‘Mrs B,' he said, looking apprehensive.

‘Pat's in my car.'

‘Right.' He thought for a moment. ‘Is she dead?'

‘Asleep.'

‘Are you sure she's not dead?'

‘Quite sure.'

‘Right.' He ran his hands over his crew cut. ‘I'll be over soon, okay?'

Margery tottered back, woke Pat and quickly gave her a biscuit and glass of cordial.

‘I usually have porridge,' she said.

An ambulance took Pat to hospital, and Margery spent the day watching a huge mixing truck vomiting liquid grey all over Mrs Bist's bald, suburban block.

The glaziers replaced Kevin's smashed window that afternoon, and that night Kevin dropped in. ‘Lucky she had that travelling rug, Mrs B,' he said. ‘It probably saved her life.'

As soon as it was dark, Margery ducked back out to the shed and removed the rug from the car.

That was the one good thing that happened during that disappointing week. I was big enough to save Pat's life even though I'd been dismissed by Angela and Blade. He just hacked off the end of my toenails then chucked his nail clippers into the steriliser and said, ‘One more fall could finish you off.' Little did he know in a matter of six short weeks I'd be sitting here on the forty-second floor very much looking forward to my final fall.

Tuesday came around and, of course, so did Anita. While she was there I worked on my second cross-stitch. I'd done
Cursed be he
and was starting
on
removeth.
I must say, that one worked out well, because I edged it with roses, something I don't often do because flowers are not always successful in the cross-stitch.

I wish I'd brought my cross-stitch now that I'm here. I've made a cuppa because you get free tea bags in these hotel rooms, but it's dreadful. Tastes like water wrung from wet cardboard, and these biscuits are tough, tasteless. The milk, or whatever it is, comes in
those little pods Anita used to have in her basket.

Actually, Anita asked a lot of questions that Tuesday. She'd already mentioned a flatmate, so she must have been scheming right from the start. I was watching the builders put together the new house frame next door when I saw her pull up in her loutish car. I know it's a lout's car because Tyson and his mates love to stand around it, gawping, and she opened the hood to let them look at the engine one day. They like to look at Tony's car as well, but the second they even look like they might go near it he rushes out and hunts them away.

Anyrate, she bowled straight into my house, calling, ‘Knock knock, how are ya, Margery?' and I was ready for her. ‘I'm very well, thank you. You can call me Mrs Blandon.'

She attempted a joke then: ‘You can call me Anita.'

‘Let yourself in, did you?'

‘Sometimes you've got no choice with this job,' she said.

She was obviously referring to the fact that I was stuck in the bath the first time she came, so I ignored her. ‘Don't presume to let yourself in ever again. My hearing is very good. I would have heard you knocking.'

‘Fair enough,' she said. ‘Before I get stuck into the housework I'll do your dressing for you.'

I said, ‘You're not allowed to.'

‘People are always saying that to me,' she said and just settled herself in front of me, on the floor of all places, didn't even suggest we go to the bathroom. She unwrapped a plastic dressing pack, so I pointed out that she wasn't a trained nurse.

‘No,' she said, ‘but I'm a big fan of
General Hospital
.'

It's a show on the telly. I don't watch it.

Then she peeled the plastic off, washed the wound, dabbed it with some sort of ointment and covered it with another piece of
plastic. She's got a light touch for someone so hard-looking, and she mentioned that if the wound ulcerated ‘we'd really be in trouble'.

She put my washing on, swept, dusted and put clean sheets on my bed, all the while asking the usual questions: had I taken my tablets?

‘I take them every other morning; why would I not take them today?'

‘Do you have any problems getting in and out of bed?'

‘I'm up, aren't I?'

‘Trouble getting on and off the toilet or the commode?'

‘Certainly not.'

‘Would you like meals delivered three times a week?'

‘Would you?'

‘Certainly not,' she said. ‘It'd be like eating fishing net.' Then she made a pot of tea and I was very surprised because she made it properly – found everything herself, warmed the pot and popped the cosy on it and left it to draw. Then she put her nose to the milk carton and promptly poured it down the sink.

‘That was Cheryl's milk,' I said.

‘I'll mention it next time I see her,' brisk little thing that she is, digging into her basket and bringing out a little pod of long-life milk. She asked if I needed any shopping done.

‘I'm quite capable of doing my own, thank you, and anyrate, I don't take milk.'

‘Milk's good for your bones.' Then she squeezed her calcium-enriched, long-life milk into her cup, turned the pot three times and poured the tea, even pausing to tilt the pot as she poured, but the most remarkable thing to me was, she used a strainer! I nearly fell out of my chair. Who'd have thought someone who looked like her could make tea properly? Cheryl's tea tasted like dishwater. No love in it.

Anita said her mother taught her how to make tea.

I can see now that it was a clue as to who she really was, and I remember thinking at the time, ‘It was as if I'd taught her myself.' If only I'd had my wits about me.

She sat on the stoop with her tea, smoking a cigarette, and asked me more questions. ‘I can see you like cross-stitch, Mrs Blandon,' she said, ‘but what else floats your boat?'

I almost said, ‘Minding my own business,' but I told her that I enjoyed cross-stitch more than anything. ‘I've always got a few on the go. I like the proverbs best, but you can always get a nice landscape pattern with cross-stitch. I'm not one for flowers so much, or birds. They're more for the embroiderers, though I've never seen one yet that's been able to get the curve of a petal right, you know, and the exact colour. I also enjoy cleaning the house, especially the polishing.'

‘You're the only person I've ever met who likes polishing,' she said, so I explained that I started my job with Doctor Woods when Judith started school. For forty-four years I cleaned that practice from six o'clock in the evening until seven-thirty, and that's where I developed my love of polishing, because I made that brass plaque on Doctor Woods' door glow, and then I got to work on his doorknobs and they shone right up until the day I left, and this of course led to my other hobby – looking after Walter's trophies. And, every evening, I turned the page on Doctor Woods' desk calendar:
You are never fully dressed until you wear a smile
,
Health is not simply the absence of sickness
, hence my passion for wise sayings, which have been such a comfort and guide to me.

It's a pity more doctors didn't take note of their desk calendar quotes.
No doctor is better than three. 

Doctor Woods retired two years ago, so I had to retire as well,
though I was down to one day a week by then. ‘And of course,' I said to this Anita, ‘I'm musical. Every Saturday I visit Pat and play the piano for the old people. Pat lived across the road from me for sixty years, and on Monday I saved her life.'

‘Is that right?'

I could tell she didn't believe me. ‘I found her in my car.'

‘That's a good safe spot.'

‘She's in the hospital at the moment.'

‘That's not so safe.'

I was pleased for Kevin's sake that I'd saved Pat, though I will admit that when he rode away to go searching for her that Saturday night all I could think of was Pat tumbling along under the metal wheels of a tram, her sand-covered intestines flopping in the tracks with her wig, her orange eyelids and paste pearls scattered along the bluestones. Well . . . if I can't be myself with you, Cecily, I'd have to pretend to be nice
all
the time, and besides, not once, never ever, did Pat attempt to include me, one of her oldest neighbours, in her Grand Final parties in the park or St Patrick's Day barbecues or Melbourne Cup Day at the pub. I sat on my bed in my front room for years and years watching them all coming and going with their big, stupid hats and plates of sandwiches, bottles of Green Ginger Wine, the laughter and hilarity wafting over to me like waves from a distant wireless.

Of course, I know why I wasn't asked
now
, but at the time Pat was in my car, all I knew was that Lance went to those parties and I never was included.

As I say, I wouldn't have gone, but it would have been nice to have been asked. Pat even went to Walter's fights when Lance could get cheap tickets. I wouldn't go, even when I was asked to go that one time. I'm not the type that enjoys violence.

And Pat bragged about that ruddy rosebush, the Barrone Prèvost.
‘It was Grandmother's rose,' she use to say, her nose tilting to the ceiling. ‘The original one come all the way from
In-glnd
in eighteen
fordy-two
.' I think that's a bit of an inflated description, really. ‘
Bew-di-ful
, isn't it?' she'd say, so I'd say, ‘Yes, it's beautiful,' and she'd say, ‘You don't have to tell anyone a Baronne Prévost rose is
bew-di-ful
.'

She was just a blatherskite, but I got her back with the Public Scalping Incident. That's what Lance called it.
Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned, Nor hell a fury like a woman scorned
.

It happened at the 1976 Ladies' Legacy Luncheon. Pat and Bill were big in Legacy, and for Ladies' Luncheon, Pat was allowed to take a guest since it was her turn to give the address. As she was rehearsing her address one last time, articulating and emphasising her words to her assembled Ballroom Dancing Frocks, the phone rang. She was disappointed to hear her guest, Betty, say her car had broken down. ‘I know it's a long way, Pat, but we could go halves in the price of a taxi.'

After she put the phone down Pat gazed out the front window, wondering how she could get all that way to the Legacy Hall in time. Who drove a car? Across the road Mrs Bist was bustling off down the street with her cane basket brimming with goods for the needy, her cardigan pulled tightly over her large bosom and her arms crossed supportively underneath. And there was Margery, sluicing her front footpath with hot, soapy water.

Pat turned and went to the kitchen, where her husband, Bill, sat at the table hunched over his form guide. The wireless blared above the noise of his nebuliser, chugging away on the table beside his cigarettes, ashtray and lighter.

‘I'm off,' Pat yelled, and Bill looked up at her, his face beyond the green ventilator mask was cyanosed, the trim of his ears necrosis-white.

‘Don't forget to turn that machine off when the Ventriloquin runs out.' Her husband raised one finger, and Pat gathered her speech, purse and cardigan and left, stopping to check her hair one last time in the hall mirror.

‘I'll just get ready,' Margery said, and Pat told her to get a wriggle on.

She stood next to Lance, who was watching
The Mike Walsh Show
, his cigarettes and ashtray on the small imitation-teak table next to his oxygen cylinder, a longneck bottle of beer on the floor beside him.

Pat checked the oxygen level in his cylinder. Margery maintained them, changing them when Lance asked her to, easing the taps with generous amounts of oil when they were stiff, but it wasn't uncommon for Margery to leave the tap loose or even attach him to an empty cylinder, so Lance would end up red-faced and twitching, breathing carbon dioxide. ‘One of these days you'll blow us all to buggery,' Pat shouted above the sound of the telly, which made Lance smile and cough. He worked a ball of phlegm into his mouth, pulled the oxygen tube in his nose to the side and expectorated into his mug.

‘A day out might do Marge good,' she said, and Lance gave her the thumbs-up.

When Margery emerged a minute later wearing her good shoes, white cardigan, her precious pearls, a smear of pink on her lips and an armful of sheet music, Pat said, ‘Marge, there isn't a person within earshot who doesn't know you play the piano, but that doesn't mean everyone wants to hear you actually play the piano.'

‘Good,' Margery lied. ‘I'd prefer not to have to play.' She popped her sheet music back in the piano seat.

They'd been gone less than five minutes before Lance and Bill tottered down to the pub – Bill, short, round and breathless in a vinyl bomber jacket and Kmart jeans beside Lance, a tall and immaculately turned out man in a mustard-coloured cardigan and grey turn-up trousers. His mouth was open, sucking in air, a green tube reached to the oxygen cylinder rattling behind him, the little trolley wheels going
tweet tweet tweet
.

So Margery found herself at the top table, the Legacy leaders' table, a dignitary to her right and Pat on her left, before her a sea of soft brown and blue curls, ample-bosomed ladies, floral and pastel with fleshy earlobes, wattle and dewlaps, all maintained by step-ins and various prosthetics.

Before her, propped against a saucer of geranium petals surrounding a floating Chrysanthemum, was a white card advising the day's proceedings. First on the program was the local choir, who sang ‘God Save the Queen'. The assembled ladies then sat through number two, ‘Welcome Speech by the Chairwoman'. Number three, ‘The main meal will be served', was either chicken or ham salad, followed by number four, the choir singing ‘Morning Has Broken' while the ladies enjoyed a fruit compote with custard. For number five, a lass from St Joseph's school read a composition titled ‘The Effects of War on Those Left Behind'. Her story was based on the life of her great-grandmother, who had grown her own vegetables and milked her cow and ploughed her own fields during the war with the help of the Land Army. And then it was Pat's turn. The MC said, ‘I give you Pat Cruickshank and this month's address, titled “The Unseen Effects of War on Women”.'

Pat bared her teeth to Margery and said, ‘Any fruit seeds stuck to my dentures?'

‘No,' said Margery, and Pat turned to stand up. At that moment, Margery noticed the tag poking out the neck of Pat's cardigan. ‘Hang
on,' she said and reached up to tuck it in, when the catch on her wristwatch caught one of Pat's curls as she rose.

Margery had no idea Pat wore a wig, no idea her hair had snapped off and fallen out after years and years of peroxide and perming fluid, and so Pat stood frozen before the room of fellow legatees, her rival addressees, past and future, the thin tufts of her brittle hair flattened against her shiny, damp pate and her wig dangling from Margery's wristwatch.

Finally, someone started clapping. Pat had turned deep, deep red and the audience, moved by her brave humility, started to applaud thunderously.

Pat replaced her wig to present her speech, her nasal, bandsaw timbre uncharacteristically subdued, and the chairwoman then gave a moving address about being brave and the silent effects of war, relating how, because there were no dentists and no money, a lot of women lost their teeth, and a lot of women suffered back injuries and prolapses from labouring work, and this, coupled with nervous conditions caused by the hardships of war, meant they had fertility and hormonal problems, which of course, in many cases, led to hair loss. She asked for a show of hands from everyone in the room who'd lost hair because of the war. No one owned up to hair loss but everyone put their hand up for loss of teeth, most owned up to nervous complaints, one for a bowel prolapse and two for uterine prolapse.

Afterwards, Margery pulled up outside Pat's house and turned to apologise again, but Pat slammed the passenger door so hard the window popped out of its runners and fell into the door. Lance had the window fixed, but it was never the same. Even after so many years had passed, each Saturday and every second Thursday, at every bump the window rattled and Margery grinned at Pat's bittersweet humiliation.

But Pat had her revenge. At the time Margery outwardly dismissed the spiteful words Pat delivered to her as just that – vengeful – yet they caused a chasm that took two decades to bridge. In those twenty years there were further minor rifts – short, violent skirmishes that took place in the supermarket or at Mrs Bist's front gate over principles and opinions. But eventually the vitality in the women began to wane with waxing age, and they found themselves one day watching despondently as yet another strange couple moved in and demolished a perfectly good home that had taken someone they had known well a lifetime to build. Margery shook her head and said, ‘
Tsk
,' and Pat said, ‘What's past help should be past grief,' and this signalled a start to breach the chasm.