There Should Be More Dancing (20 page)

‘I don't really care about cars either,' said Walter, leaning over Anita possessively.

‘Christ,' Kevin said, staring at Margery, ‘that's a decent shiner.' He also leaned down over Anita, pretending to watch her bandage Margery's shin. ‘I think I know where I've seen you. You're an actress?'

She stood up, pointed to her letterbox-red hair and said, ‘I'm often mistaken for Nicole Kidman.'

‘I can see that,' Walter said earnestly. Anita started to feel hemmed in, felt the gaze of two men in the tiny space, and said to herself,
Leave now before you feel obliged to be kind to them, trouble is not in your plan.
The last stalker who presumed to insert himself into her life she found hanging from her doorknocker by his collar one day when she arrived home. The lonely stalker, his nose swollen and bleeding, thrust a bunch of flowers at her and said, ‘I met your flatmate.' This led to the subsequent unanticipated, incriminating visit from the police . . . which led to an assault charge and a trafficking stolen goods charge for her ‘flatmate', Ray, and a handling stolen goods charge for herself, hence the probation.

‘I'm off now,' Anita said, grabbing her work basket. The two bachelors followed her to the front door, drawn along as if they were attached to her with fishing line, leaving Margery in her chair. Above her, the wall hanging said,
Never morning wore To evening, but some heart did break.
She fought her jealousy as her special, precious boy shadowed the home help up the hall. She had sat next to Walter, stayed awake talking to him for days; she had not let him die alone. She'd saved him, twice.

Walter reached out and tugged the car door, but it resisted – it was locked. His fingers flipped out of the handle, sending him back a few spaces. ‘Oops,' Anita said, unlocking her door and slipping into the driver's seat. She pulled it shut and started the car, but Kevin was leaning on the window, motioning her to wind it down, so she did just a bit, the engine rumbling. ‘I know you from somewhere, I wouldn't forget someone like you.'

Walter leaned down, told her through the same small opening that Judith wanted to put Mumsy in a home, but it wasn't necessary since the government wanted old people to stay at home. ‘I know,' Anita said, inching her car away from the kerb.

‘We should go out for a countery some time,' Walter persisted,
‘talk about the house renovations over a pot and parma. My shout.'

‘I'll come too,' said Kevin, but she drove off, leaving the two ageing bachelors on the footpath watching her car until it turned the corner. They sighed, looked at the glorious world around them and wandered toward the house.

‘Yep-see-dep-see,' Walter said, and Kevin mentioned she was ‘a bit of alright'. ‘I saw her first,' Walter said.

They were sitting in the front pew looking at Mrs Parsons' tiny coffin, Margery dozing under her hat, Walter humming the tune to ‘You Were Always On My Mind,' Kevin gazing open-mouthed at the majestic ceiling beams tainted pink, blue and golden in the candlelit leadlight. Beside him, Pat stared at the coffin, confused. She scratched her head, skewing her wig, just as the priest emerged from his vestiary. He recognised Pat immediately. ‘Welcome, Mrs Cruickshank, how nice to see you.'

Pat turned to Kevin, ‘Am I dead?'

‘Not quite,' he said, and his mother turned again to the coffin.

The priest had only just started the first prayer when Pat nudged Kevin, ‘Why did you bring me to this place?'

‘Shush, Mum.'

‘I don't want to be
here
.' She grabbed her walking stick and marched out, calling, ‘I know why you've brought me
here
and I'm not going.'

Kevin locked her in the car and arrived back just as Sister Bernadette signalled Walter to get up and sing his song. He stood next to Mrs Parsons' coffin, closed his eyes, raised his arm, adjusting the imaginary gemstone rings on his fingers, opened his mouth to sing, and outside the car horn blared,
Tooot
.
Tooooooooot
.

‘Oh, for Christ's sake!' Kevin said and stomped out, only to come back in and announce that Pat needed to go to the toilet, so the nuns went to get her but she refused to go, clinging to the inside doorhandle and shouting through the windscreen, ‘I know what you're up to, but I'm not going yet!'

Kevin said he'd had enough, but Walter wanted to sing, so he sang ‘You Were Always On My Mind' in his lovely nut-and-honey baritone to Mrs Parsons' tidy little pine coffin, and the priest said it was as good as, if not better than, Elvis would have sung it.

In the car Pat said, ‘Where are we going now?'

‘Home.'

‘Liar.'

‘Let's have a nice cuppa,' Walter said.

‘Bugger the bloody cuppa,' Pat said. ‘I'll have beer.'

I must have dozed off. It's after midnight according to the electric clock over there. We were up to Mrs Parsons' funeral, weren't we? Pat wore floral, but she's always been the blowzy type. She thinks she's glamorous. Walter got really serious about Anita that day. I went to my room for something, I've forgotten what, and I happened to overhear him ask her out for a counter meal. At the time I was pleased for him, told myself he needed a nice
friend
. She's not my type, as I say, but Walter's fond of her so I thought,
Well, we'll just work with what we've got
, because it's proved impossible for him to find lasting affection. Morris once told him he looked like he'd walked into a bookshelf. He had a beautiful face before the boxing, and even though he's put on a bit of condition he still looks terrific. He reminds me of Lance before the drink got him.

Of course, if the truth be known, the drink got them all. It's that pub. Grog got Pat's Bill too. Kevin said it was the war that got him, but I watched people walk to that pub and stagger home for sixty years, and you can't tell me it was the war that got them all. Lance
and Bill were good mates. Right up to the end, and I mean the very end, when they tottered off to the pub with Lance's little oxygen cart squeaking along behind them.

Anyrate
,
it was a very plain coffin, and small, like Mrs Parsons. I hoped the nuns had got her hair right, and I hoped they'd dressed her in something warm. Pat was right about the tropical blood. With a name like Poinciana Euphemia, you'd have to be foreign.

Mrs Parsons believed in God. She obviously didn't think he was unjust, even with all that business of her confiscated child. And given the number of unnecessary and cruel deaths in the world, personally, I can't see how anyone wouldn't see that God was unjust. I suppose it's a shocking thing for someone like me, someone upright, decent and honest, to come right out and say I don't believe in God. Why would I? He took you. And what had you done?

Nothing.

We never went to church again.

That first Sunday after you died we got up, dressed in our Sunday best, as usual, me and little Shirley in our patent leather shoes, white socks and white cardigans. Clarry combed Billy's hair flat and put clean bandaids on his knees, and I tied Terry in his pram. Dad was in his Sunday suit, and we came into the kitchen after breakfast but Mum was still in her dressing gown. The breakfast bowls were piled in the sink. When she saw us she just turned and stared out the window at the clouds. Dad sat down at the kitchen table, rested his hat on his knee and looked at it, so we went back to our room and sat on our beds. When the church bells rang out across Moonee Ponds, Mother started moaning, like wind through telegraph wires.

Once bitten by a snake you're always afraid of rope.

~

After Pat's scene at the church we drove to Kevin's place for a cuppa. My word he's let the place go, Kevin has. The roses along the fence are positively dangerous. You could lose an eye going through his front gate because the rose arch is so overgrown.

Anyrate, Pat just walked in the front door, out the back door, down the side of the house and out the front gate again. We didn't notice she'd gone for a few minutes, but I did notice her wigs are still there on their false heads, poking up from the top of the wardrobe like corpses in the cupboard, but all her sparkling net dancing dresses are gone. The entire second bedroom was always used exclusively for Pat's ball dresses and shoes, and shelves full of dance trophies her and Bill had won. Poor old Kevin had to sleep on the back porch. The dancing trophies are in a box on the back porch now. They've turned black from lack of polishing.

Naturally, we found Pat at the pub. I'd been to the hotel on occasion with Lance when we were first married but I was never comfortable, and Lance always came home beered-up with a head full of all sorts of rot and nonsense. ‘One day,' he said, ‘we'll be absorbed into Asia and the black man will run the world.'

I hadn't been inside that pub for at least forty years. It's been completely rebuilt since the explosion, but it still stinks, and I'm telling the truth when I say there was a fight in progress when we stepped through the door, but Pat just moved through all the swinging pool cues and flying profanities to the bar as if she was invisible. But I will say I did find out things I didn't know that day. My word I did. For one thing, I know why Tyson feels he can steal my water and run an extension cord across the street and burn my fence. He was there, still wearing Mrs Parsons' kilt, with
his flatmates, thirty-year-old teenagers who all look like they've just crawled out from under a greasy car. Anyrate, Tyson tried to pick a fight with Walter, bouncing around him with his fists up, but Walter just ignored him. But then he said, ‘If you hadn't lost that fight my mum would still have her house.'

Kevin added something then: ‘It's not Walter's fault that your mother's got a gambling addiction,' and one of Tyson's mates, a lad with a swastika sprayed onto his shaved head, stood on Kevin's feet and put his fingers on his neat moustache and messed it up. I've never seen Kevin angry. He actually turned white.

Meantime, Tyson was still taking swings at Walter, so the barmaid grabbed him by the ear, led him to the door and shoved him out, but he bounced straight back in, so Walter lifted him by his waistband and collar and threw him out again like he was chucking water from a bucket.

Someone called out, ‘
Ding-ding
.' Walter's feet got into position and he bounced around as if he was just out of his corner again, a big smile on his face, and everyone clapped. They all seemed to know who we were and they all seemed to know who little Squigglehead was. Someone put money in the juke box but the noise that came out wasn't exactly music. Pat sat perched up at the bar like she'd been sitting there for fifty years, and the barmaid put a glass of beer in front of her without even asking what she wanted. She had a wow of a time but I couldn't hear what anyone was saying because of the jukebox, not that anyone was speaking to me. As I say, I was never invited to the pub, not that I'd have gone.

Walter and Kevin had a few laughs about when they were kids. They sang a song they'd made up: ‘Mrs Bist made poo stew, and put it in a pot, Mr Bist warmed it up, and ate it with hot green snot.' I remember Lance gave them a clip over the ears for singing that.

Then I found out about Mrs Parsons' stolen child.

Kevin said, ‘Who do you think'll end up with Mrs Parsons' house?' and that's when Pat said, ‘Her son.'

No one said anything at first, but you could see Walter and Kevin thinking, the film winding back to their childhood. Then Kevin put down his glass of orange juice and said, ‘I've heard a story about that.'

Walter said, ‘I remember something . . .'

My memory started to rewind, though I'm sure I'd never heard anyone mention that Mrs Parsons had a son. ‘What son?'

‘Where is he, Mum?'

‘Who?' said Pat.

‘Mrs Parsons' son,' but Pat just got up and went to the toilet.

‘They took him away,' Walter said. ‘Something wrong with him,' but Kevin said Pat never mentioned there was anything wrong with him. In fact, he seemed to think something was wrong with Mrs Parsons.

‘What son?' I said, again.

‘He might be dead!' Kevin said, his eyes narrowing shrewdly, but I remembered about the clothes Pud said were in Mrs Parsons' second bedroom. ‘I never heard about any son,' I said.

Kevin just said, ‘You didn't hear a lot of things, Mrs B,' but Walter reckoned, ‘You can find out anything at this pub, if you know who to ask'.

Oh! How true that turned out to be.

At the same time it was a shock to me, and I just assumed it was most likely Pat spreading rumours about a missing son, but no one ever said anything to me. Anyrate, the day ended when some man brought Pat out of the gents. ‘At least she didn't squat on the carpet again,' Kevin said, and he and Walter fell about laughing. Then Pat didn't want to leave. Kevin and Walter had to carry her out on her
stool because she wouldn't let go of it. I saw him carrying it back the next morning.

It was like sitting in the middle of a toothache, the whole thing. We hadn't seen Mrs Parsons off in the way she'd have wished at all, so I was glad I'd had a quiet moment with her on that little bed when I found her.

I felt uncharacteristically weary the whole day because I couldn't sleep at night. It was the diuretics. I understand now that my tablets were sabotaged, that it was part of Judith's plot to kill me, but at the time all I knew was that it was enormously distressing, up and down, up and down on the potty all night.

She was always very reserved, Mrs Parsons, and of course it's none of my concern what she did or didn't do, but a child? A son? It just simply never occurred to me. I knew she was lonely, but that's to be expected for someone who doesn't have anyone, and I never noticed anything.

Perhaps I should have.