There Should Be More Dancing (5 page)

Margery rinsed her cup under the tap, left it to drain on the sink and sat in her chair with her cross-stitch. By the time Mrs Parsons' blind went up, she had come to terms with Charmaine's visit and felt calmer, so she set out for next door. On her front path, just beneath the letterbox, were her glasses. One lens was cracked and lay in three neat triangles in the rim. Next door, in the bright morning sunshine the excavator roared, Mrs Bist's carefully painted walls splintering under its iron tracks. Margery stepped cautiously towards Mrs Parsons' place and pushed the squeaky little gate open. She made her way down the side of the house to the back door, knocked, called ‘Yoo-hoo,' and let herself into her neighbour's kitchen. Mrs Parsons waited in her rocking chair near the wood stove, though there had been no fire in the grate since electric heaters started appearing in summer sales catalogues in the 1950s. Only the winter before, Cheryl had replaced her two-bar electric wall heater with an upright electric oil heater on wheels. Mrs Parsons also used it to dry her rinsed cottontails and wool stockings of an evening.

Margery sat down opposite her neighbour. From the wireless, a soprano with a warm, lyrical voice sang,

Shepherd, the meadows are in bloom.

You should graze your flock on this side
,

Sing baïlèro lèrô.

Shepherd, the water divides us and I can't cross it,

Sing baïlèro lèrô.

‘Good morning, how are you today, Mrs Parsons?' Mrs Parsons said she was as well as could be expected, thank you. Margery reached down and lifted Mrs Parsons' right foot, rocking the old lady's chair back. She tied her neighbour's lace, gently lowered her stiff leg and, as she picked up Mrs Parsons' left foot, apologised again, ‘Sorry about the argument yesterday.' Again, Mrs Parsons said, ‘Never mind.'

‘Mrs Bist's house has gone.'

‘Is that what all the noise is?'

‘It was a perfectly good house.' Margery stood up, smoothed her skirt and, as she did every morning, asked, ‘Are you alright then, Mrs Parsons?' and, as always, Mrs Parsons replied, ‘Yes, thank you. You're very kind.'

‘You didn't get a bossy lass called Charmaine bothering you?'

‘Not today.'

At her gate, Margery paused to take in the vast space above the pile of splintered weatherboards, twisted iron, smashed window frames and blackened chimney bricks where Mrs Bist's house had stood, just an hour ago. The excavator sat bludgeoning its way through the back shed, the arms of Mrs Bist's Hills Hoist poking out from under its tracks. Feeling threatened by the destruction of certainties
she had known for sixty years, Margery went inside her little house, snibbed her screen door and pulled shut the front door. She tried to close the back porch door, but it wouldn't go past a bulge where the sunken stumps had buckled a floorboard, so she closed and bolted the kitchen door instead. While the kettle boiled again, she sticky-taped her glasses together, gluing the glass triangles to the frame, and secured them with the ends of a blue bandaid. Then she flicked on her wireless. Andy Williams was just finishing ‘Moon River' and the announcer on Magic Radio Best Tunes of All Time told her it was ten fifteen.

She tipped the still-warm pot of tea down the gully trap, took two slices of bread from the freezer and popped them into the toaster. While they toasted she warmed the pot again with boiling water, tipped it out, put two teaspoons of tea in, filled it with boiling water and covered the pot with a cross-stitched cosy. She opened the side doors of her little toaster, turned the bread and got the butter, marmalade, plate, knife and tea strainer organised. She took the toast from the toaster, propped it in a steeple to cool, turned the toaster off, put the strainer over her cup, turned the pot three times, poured her tea then carefully buttered her toast, making sure the butter went all the way to the crusts. She spread the marmalade sparingly and sat enjoying her breakfast while Rod Stewart sang ‘Maggie May' and the excavator next door shovelled Mrs Bist's house into the dump bin, fine dust raining down from her vibrating ceiling. Then Margery removed her slippers and went back to bed until Tuesday morning.

From her bed Margery could see her new neighbours, Tony and Miriana, standing on the razed block next door, Miriana's burnt-orange belly protruding from the gap between her small singlet and tracksuit pants. ‘
Tsk
, just look at them,' Margery scoffed. ‘They spray a suntan from a can these days, so everyone's the colour of a raw saveloy. And he's got hair like an echidna.'

Tony wandered to the middle of the street, mobile phone to his ear, watching down to the corner, waiting for something. ‘He's probably waiting for some thunderous machine to rattle my house all day.'

Over at Tyson's, the curtains billowed through the smashed front windows. Next door, Kevin's dark, leafy house was, as usual, quiet.

‘Well, I'd better get up now, Cecily. I'll have a shower, though I only just had one Sunday for my birthday party.' She reached for her dressing gown. Nat King Cole sang ‘Rambling Rose' while she ate her tea and toast. In the bathroom she undressed, hanging her gown and nightie on the back of the door, then carefully covered
what was left of her set with a shower cap. She removed an old shampoo bottle from the bottom of the bath, took hold of the shower taps and swung her right leg in, and was alarmed when she found she wasn't able to gain purchase. She started to slide, clinging to the taps, sinking. Her crotch came to rest on the edge of the bath, stabilising her temporarily, but her left leg lost its faint hold on the floor and she sank to lie along the edge of the bath, clinging on with her knees like a caterpillar to a stem. Then her left knee lost its hold and she rolled into the bath, tearing the bandaid from the wound on her shin. Water from the cold tap shot from the rose and, feeling her twisted arms being dragged from their sockets, Margery let go of the taps and flipped over like a sausage in hot water.

She lay in the bottom of the bath, gasping under the cold downpour, the clean water gushing down the plug hole, her water bill rising second by second. She ripped the shower curtain down, the plastic rings pinging onto the ceiling and bouncing to the floor, and she pulled it up over her head. She was still there, shivering under the torturous roar of water, when she heard someone calling, ‘Yoo-hoo! Anyone home?' Then the water stopped and the shower curtain pulled back. Margery looked up into the painted face of a pantomime actress. The woman looking down at her had startling blue eyes edged with black kohl in a pale face rimmed with wild, letterbox-red hair. The actress turned the taps off.

‘I'm Anita, your new carer.'

‘You don't look like a carer.'

‘I don't want to look like a carer. You'd be Margery.'

‘Mrs Blandon to you.'

‘You're alright then?'

‘I'm stuck. You can help me out, if you wouldn't mind.'

Anita said, ‘There might be something broken.'

‘I'd certainly know if I'd a broken bone, don't you think?'

‘We'd better call an ambulance just the same.'

Cheryl had warned her that the old lady could be cantankerous, but Anita saw terror in her eyes. ‘Mrs Blandon, it's okay. You don't necessarily die if you go to hospital these days.'

‘Now listen here, I'd know if there was anything broken, and I tell you there isn't. Just help me out.'

‘You're bleeding.' Anita carefully peeled the bandaids from Margery's papery shin. ‘Ouch. That's nasty. Right on your tibia.'

‘Do you always state the obvious?'

‘Stay there,' Anita said and winked. In the kitchen she flicked the kettle on, then collected pillows and a blanket. She propped Margery up in the bath and tucked the blanket around her. While Margery drank a cup of sweet black tea Anita sat on the back step smoking a cigarette. ‘Tell me what happened, Mrs Blandon.'

‘I slid, very gracefully I must say, on spilled shampoo.'

‘You're real lucky, you know. One of my other ladies, Mrs Razic down the street, slipped in the bath but she wasn't holding on. She's got stitches.'

Margery said, ‘I'm perfectly alright and you can tell my daughter, Judith, that I am not going to a nursing home.'

‘You should get a flatmate, an international student since you're so close to the uni. You could have been there for days.'

‘A flatmate's not going to stop me from falling.'

‘No, but they help around the house and they'd help you out of the bath.'

‘This is the last time I'll fall in the bath, I assure you.'

‘We'd better get you checked out by your doctor.'

Margery panicked. ‘As I've said, I'm quite alright!'

‘Okay, okay, don't give yourself a stroke. But what if something goes wrong with you later because of this fall and I get thrown in jail? I can't afford to have any sort of trouble.' Any sort of trouble was
a very real threat to Anita, since she held her job on a probationary basis through her Corrective Services officer.

‘That's right,' Margery said, ‘just thinking of yourself. I thought you were here to help
me
.'

‘I am,' Anita said, sitting on the edge of the bath. ‘And you do need to see a doctor.'

‘If you tell Judith,' Margery said, ‘I'll phone the council and tell them you stole my pearls.'

‘Yeah, right,' Anita said, ‘and I'll phone the ACAT team and tell them you need to go to a home.'

‘You're an appalling person.'

‘You started it.' Anita got a kitchen chair and put it beside the bath, dug around in her work basket and found dressings. She tenderly cleaned Margery's bleeding shin, creased the skin back into place and covered it with a clear plastic dressing, then she got into the bath behind Margery and wrapped her arms around her chest. ‘I'm going to lift you up, alright? Trust me.' She knew that Margery had never felt so vulnerable or useless, knew that she wanted to cry but was too furious, afraid of slipping again, and didn't really trust someone the size of Anita to bear her weight. She also knew she no longer had a choice.

‘One, two, three,' Anita said and felt Margery's slight body stiffen against her, but she eased her up, rested her on the edge of the bath then slid her over to the chair. Anita was probably the only other person on the planet apart from Margery's husband who had seen Margery naked, and even then he might not have actually seen her
completely
naked. She felt humiliated sitting there like a thawing chicken, a stranger patting her bottom dry and holding panties for her to step into while she steadied herself on the handbasin like a drunk. But Margery let Anita sponge her down with warm water, and as Anita eased her knee-high stockings over her dressing, Margery
said, ‘Just have a look and see if Mrs Parsons' blind is up, will you? You can see through the lounge room window.'

Cheryl had also told Anita about Mrs Parsons, that she could just let herself in, if needed, since Mrs Parsons would be waiting in her chair, and since the blind was up, Anita declared she would pop in and ‘say g'day'.

‘No you won't. You'll give her a fright.'

‘That's okay, she'll be sitting down when she sees me.'

‘You don't know what to do.'

‘Tie her laces. I'll tell her you'll be in later, as usual, okay? I need to meet her, introduce myself. Cheryl always popped in to see her, didn't she?' She left Margery to finish dressing, arriving back just in time to help her comb up what was left of her set and rinse. Then she buckled Margery into her car and drove to her own doctor, Doctor Kosztadinov.

‘What sort of a doctor has a name like that?' Margery sniffed.

‘What's his name got to do with his ability?'

‘Nothing, I suppose, since they're all sorcerers and thimbleriggers.'

‘Didn't you work for one for forty years?'

‘Forty-four, but I never imagined he'd be able to cure me of anything.'

Doctor Kosztadinov studied Margery's skin tear through the Tegaderm, gave her a routine examination and asked a lot of questions.

‘When was the last time you needed to see a doctor?'

‘Fifteen years ago, I had a little turn.'

Doctor Kosztadinov prescribed new medications, told her she'd feel so much better she wouldn't know herself, said Anita would put her tablets in a dosette and all she had to do was take the tablets according to the day of the week. Anita would show her. Then he asked how long she'd lived alone.

‘My husband was killed twenty years ago.'

‘How was he killed?'

‘He was careless,' Margery said.

‘Was it a happy marriage?'

‘I raised three children. Of course I was happy,' she snapped.

On the way home, Anita stopped at Union Square, and while the chemist filled Margery's prescriptions Anita smoked a cigarette, watching across to Margery, a small, unhappy woman sitting low in the front seat, scowling at the world outside. It was Anita's first week on the job, and she'd already had one near miss with Mrs Razic. This was the first job she'd ever had that didn't involve serving beer or taking orders, and she understood from her brief, accidental brush with incarceration that life was not a practice run; she was halfway through her only chance at it, and she didn't want to spend the rest of her time cleaning other people's houses, nor did she want to end up alone, a cantankerous nuisance, or in a nursing home. It was now certain that she didn't want to get to eighty and wish she'd done things another way,
better
.

She found her bankcard, slid it into the ATM and checked her savings account.
It wasn't raining when Noah built the ark
, she told herself. Then she resolved to give up smoking, save eighty dollars a week, travel – a trip to Disneyland with a stopover in Hawaii. If Skye, her twenty-one-year-old daughter, could save enough for a deposit on a house just from working in a bank, she could start a business, her own business. She knew about cleaning houses; she would set up a business cleaning other people's houses, branch out to offices, schools. Then she remembered her criminal record.

She ground out her last cigarette, paid for Margery's prescription and bought a packet of Nicorette patches. At Gold Street, she put Margery into bed, made a nice poached egg on toast and, while Margery ate it, she sat propped against the other end of the bed and filled the
complimentary dosette with tablets. Monday–Sunday; Breakfast – Somac for reflux, two Panadol Osteo for arthritis pain, Coversyl anti-hypertensive, Frusemide diuretic and half an asprin. Lunch – two Panadol Osteo, Frusemide, a multivitamin and potassium. Dinner – Temazepam to sleep and Panadol Osteo. Then she made a list of things that would make life for Margery safer, a ‘Plan for Independence List'.

1. New glasses

2. Portable phone – push-button, big numbers

3. Take the bath out and put a shower base and chair in, OR, put a bench across the bath temporarily. New taps + washers

4. Move the handrails next to the shower so M can reach them

5. Replace all floor mats in the house with non-slip ones

6. Adjust the doors so that they are secure

7. Get new solid shoes with grip and better insoles

8. Smoke detectors put in

Anita studied the list then drew a line from the bottom to the top, making the smoke detectors number one. She tried to sell Margery the idea of getting a SCEM – a Safe Call Emergency Monitor telephone
.
‘You hang a monitor around your neck so that when you fall, you just push the button and the council comes.' But in Margery's mind she saw three council workers with reflector jackets and Stop/Slow signs standing over her as she lay naked in the bath.

‘Mrs Bist wasn't able to push a button after she fell,' Margery said defiantly. ‘She was unconscious.'

Anita tried guilt. ‘How would your family feel if you'd fallen and had to lie there for hours before Mrs Parsons decided she didn't want to go to bed with her shoes on?'

‘They'd be happy and relieved,' Margery replied.

Anita conceded defeat when she phoned the council and was told that, due to budget restraints, Margery's name would be added to the bottom of a long, needs-based SCEM waiting list.

After she'd soaked and scrubbed Margery's commode pot, cleaned the bath, dragged all the floor mats into the sun, put the chairs up then swept and mopped the floors, she stood in the bedroom doorway and asked if Margery had ever wanted to see the world.

‘Those sorts of things weren't possible in our day,' she said. ‘Anyrate, you can see it on the telly for free, and a lot of it isn't much chop as far as I can tell.'

‘Right,' Anita said, scratching in her basket for her cigarettes, ‘I'll be off now. Give us a buzz if you need anything.'

Margery said again, almost tearfully, though she wasn't sure why she felt so emotional about something she knew she wasn't going to do, ‘I don't want to go to a home.'

Anita said, ‘You don't have to go to a home these days. The government prefers you to stay put. It's cheaper.'