There Should Be More Dancing (24 page)

Everyone's gone home and left their lights on. There are lights on all over the place, for as far as I can see. A complete waste of electricity, but this bed, I must say, is very comfortable. The sheets are tight across my toes but it's very nice to lie in. When I was sick, it was, I found, better to sit up rather than lie down, and as the day wore on I felt better. The roaring in my head ceased.

I'm unaware of what exactly happened but Anita dropped in on her way to Mrs Razic's. I remember I was at home in Ascot Vale – at least, I dreamed I was. Mother was at the stove wearing that apron with the poodles, and there was the thud of Dad's bag on the back porch, so Shirley, Terrence, Clarry and Willy ran through the kitchen to meet him, and then there was the smell of steam and coal dust from Dad's wool suit, and you were there. It's hard to explain, but it was like the
feeling
of
being
there, of having you there alive and complete. That's how I'd best describe the sensation – complete. My instincts were alive, I could
feel
you, see you sitting there smiling at me,
alive
, and you said, ‘Oh, sister, end my aching heart,' and I reached out for
you. Such happiness! I was pleased and eager to go with you, be with you, and my soul cried and my heart turned over in my chest and I ached with the deepest longing, and I actually touched you,
felt
you, except it wasn't you. It was that ruddy Anita.

At this point I'll state truthfully that Anita did save my life, and I know I should be grateful she discovered that the tablets in the dosette were wrong that day, but that said, she was only doing her job. As I say, I'd come to terms with the fact that the shin septicaemia was making its way to my heart. So what was the point of doing anything about the other problem . . . that Judith was trying to kill me?

It was a shame about Kevin's ankle, but he doesn't know how lucky he was. He could have been killed the very next Saturday. If Kevin had been able to drive to see Pat the next Saturday, we might have been killed, but Florence had moved in by then and we took the car out shopping. So it was us who had the accident, and it was, I believed, because Judith sabotaged the brakes.

In the end, that accident with Tony's red car turned out to be a fortuitous thing.

I'm beginning to see now that sometimes the worst things happen for the best. Like Lance and his floozy. Of course now I know Pat was right about Lance having an affair, but there's not much point telling her she was right since, as I've mentioned, she's got beer soup for brains now. Poor old Pat. After Lance and Bill died we gradually became friendly again. Not because we became widows together, but because I had a car, and she reminded me that despite our stand-off over the Public Scalping Incident followed by her revenge – ‘Your husband's having an affair' – that in the middle of it she was the one who came straight to tell me about that last fight. ‘Sit down, Margery,' she said, and I did because I knew whatever had brought her all the way to my kitchen table must have been worth it, and then she went on to describe what happened, how the whole pub went dead quiet
for fifteen minutes when he fell. Everyone saw it, except me.

I hated the fact that it was Pat who told me about Walter's fall, but she did come straightaway because she didn't want me to hear it on the wireless, and she wasn't gloating. She was weeping. ‘It's a tragedy,' she kept saying. ‘A tragedy.' As if I needed to be told. Well, naturally, for years after that, my main concern was Walter, but in hindsight I see now that the fall affected everyone.

Judith and Barry had just got married, actually. Morris was around a lot more in those successful times as well, and Lance was seeing the result of all that talk about making his boys ‘into something'. Lance and Morris were heroes at that smelly pub, even Judith had friends at the time. We were all so proud. People in the neighbourhood actually stopped to speak to me. Even the pub people waved. They'd never talk but I know now that was because they were all holding a big, fat secret from me. At first Walter's success was the best thing that ever happened to everyone, I suppose the
only
thing that ever really happened. And the whole street – the whole of Brunswick, in fact – was joyous when he won the championship, but I know now some people, like Bonita Jarvis, lost an awful lot on that last fight.

The party was over.

Mind you, the Jarvis family were notorious scattergoods.

It's taken nearly forty years for Walter to get back to normal. Way back when it first happened, Lance only visited him once in the hospital, but he wasn't comfortable with all the tubes going in and out of Walter, then they told Lance he couldn't smoke in the ward, so he didn't come back. I stayed by his bed, urging him on, talking into his dear ear, directly into his poor bruised brain, while they kept him alive with the machine.

Sad they never had those machines for you. You could have been here now, and I wouldn't be sitting here thinking about throwing myself off the balcony, that's for sure.

~

When Pat said Walter was in hospital, I thought of you, Cecily. It all came back. So this time I stayed. I wasn't going to leave Walter.

To think that Mrs Parsons endured all that terrible pain as well. All those years I thought she was just reading, but she was pining, sitting there with a glass shard in her heart. Upset it, and it'll kill you.

Such a waste.

I suppose you could say we both lived lives according to circumstance, rather than to spite circumstance.

And I've ended up here, fleeing from my daughter and my husband's mistress . . . and it seems it's all my fault.
Our
fault.

Pat once said, ‘You gotta live life, Marge. You don't want to lie there in your grave all those centuries thinking about what you should have done, eh?'

Truth is, I never really did care.

Fate leads the willing, and drags along the reluctant.

I'm also aghast to say, Cecily, that at this point it very much looks as if Judith has a point, and, that said, I suppose if I do throw myself off the balcony she'll say, ‘See, Barry? I told you she never cared about us!'

It's never occurred to me that there was anything wrong with my little family, but as I sit here in this room . . .

You could say that, in hindsight, the signs were all there.

They were never apparent, though.

Well, alright then, I just never saw them.

~

But I always did the right thing, was always pleasant and helpful, kept the children away from danger, taught them not to gollop their food, to use their manners . . . Lance generally clipped them over the ears if they squabbled or told lies.

But he was the biggest liar of everyone.

It was the next Sunday that the truth started to come out.

Margery's screen door was snibbed, but when Anita reached through the torn flyscreen to turn the handle, the door did not give. It was shut tight. Through the window she could see Margery's empty bed and immediately pictured her spread like a fish fillet along the bottom of her big old bath, bleeding from the head, dead.

The gate at the side of the house was also jammed shut, so she eyed the window locks again, conscious of the painters next door, mindful of her probationary terms. The need to smoke a cigarette seeped up through her fingertips, her lungs clawed towards her mouth, her tastebuds stood up. She glanced down into her basket, but she patted the patch on her arm; ‘Disneyland,' she said. She nudged Margery's front window with the heels of her hands, and the ancient lock, resting in rotted wood, gave and rose far enough for Anita to shove her basket through. She dived in after it before the window suddenly fell and paint, like dandruff, sprinkled onto the verandah.

Margery was snoring in her tapestry world, snug in her wise words and copied pictures, surrounded by fragments of the world as others saw it. Her cheeks drooped and her partial denture clung
to her dry bottom lip. Succulent bunches of white Barronne Prèvost roses in old preserving jars dotted the surfaces and the air was thick with their heady scent. Her hands lay idle in her lap, along with her cross-stitch frame – the outline of a golliwog, its hair like a sea anemone. From the little transistor radio on her imitation teak table, Frank Ifield sang, ‘
I remember you, you're the one who made my dreams come true, a few kisses ago . . . I remember too the distant bells and the stars that fell, like the rain out of the blue ooh-ooh-ooh-hoo-hoo-hoo.
'

‘Mrs Blandon? Margery Louise Blandon, are you there?' She would not rouse. Anita took Margery's pulse. It was weak, urgent and her pallour was ashen, her breathing shallow and rapid. Anita started to feel panic rising, saw herself back at court answering a charge of neglect, failure of duty of care, murder . . . But then Margery reached out and touched her, her eyes fluttering, so Anita took her hand. ‘Come on, Mrs Blandon, wakey-wakey.' Margery coughed, sucked in her denture and squeezed Anita's hand.

‘How do you feel?' Anita said.

Initially Margery looked pleased, beatific, but then she focussed on the cushion on the couch opposite and snapped, ‘Obviously, I'm perfectly alright. Why are you here?'

‘You're the colour of porridge. I'll put the kettle on, then I'll phone the ambulance.'

‘I'm not going anywhere, especially to hospital! Judith will take me straight to a home if I go there.'

While the kettle boiled Anita checked the house, came back through with Margery's pot, which she obviously hadn't emptied for days. The colour rose in Margery's pasty cheeks and she called out, ‘I'll do that,' but Anita emptied it, left it soaking in the laundry trough then poured Margery a cup of tea. Margery reached for it, missed the handle, knocked the cup and spilled tea, then lifted it and missed her mouth. ‘I need new glasses,' she said, tea dripping over the rim.
When the cup connected with her lips she drank greedily. ‘Walter tells me the pirate film was very good.'

‘Swashbuckling. Walter and Ruby loved it.' Anita looked around the kitchen. The Sunday dishes were still in the sink. ‘Would you like a poached egg on toast, Mrs Blandon?'

Margery focussed on the cushion on the couch again. ‘Only if it's not too much trouble, dear.'

Anita put a slice of toast on, filled a saucepan with water to boil and reached for the eggs, and that's when she noticed the dosette in the ice-cream container on top of the fridge. ‘Who put these tablets in?'

‘Judith.'

Anita sighed and gave Margery the lunchtime blood pressure and heart tablets she needed, rather than the diuretics she'd been taking incorrectly. ‘You'll feel better soon, Mrs Blandon.'

While Margery chewed slowly on her egg on toast, Anita reorganised the tablets in the dosette according to breakfast, lunch and dinner rather than breakfast tablets at dinnertime and dinnertime tablets at breakfast.

‘You been feeling sleepy during the day? Wobbly?'

‘A bit.'

‘Too wobbly to get yourself something to eat.'

‘I don't get that hungry,' Margery said, scraping the plate clean with the crust of her toast.

Anita poured her another good, strong cup of tea and put two slices of buttered bread and jam on her saucer. ‘You'll come good in a little while,' she said, patting Margery's shoulder. ‘You've been taking your diuretics at night, no wonder you're tired.'

‘It's obvious my own daughter's trying to kill me.'

‘I'm sure she didn't mix up your tablets on purpose, and you don't have to go to a home.'

Suddenly, Margery said, ‘I should never have gone to that dance.'

Anita put her hand on Margery's head. ‘What dance was this, Mrs Blandon?'

‘You know the one – Moonee Ponds Town Hall, 1945. Wall to wall returned soldiers. I thought I was in love when I got married. Well, you do, don't you, on your wedding day?'

‘I guess some people do.'

‘In my day, a marriage was a marriage. It would have been a disgrace if I'd got divorced, as bad as adultery. What about your husband?'

‘Some of them were good,' she said.

‘You know, they say you marry your father, but that's not true.'

‘Apparently my father was just one of the blokes at the bar.'

‘Well, that explains a lot,' Margery said.

Anita continued to gaze out into the backyard but said pointedly, ‘I hear Mrs Parsons had a baby?'

‘Yes, but Mrs Parsons wasn't the sort to have a baby out of wedlock.'

‘Ever meet
Mr
Parsons?'

‘Mrs Parsons was a person who just wouldn't have had a baby out of wedlock.'

‘But if she had, you wouldn't hold it against her, would you?'

‘Not Mrs Parsons, no.'

‘I'm told her son was brought up by his father and grandmother.'

‘Who told you that?'

‘Mrs Razic. My grandmother brought me up, but my mother came every Wednesday for tea,' Anita said.

‘You must have felt abandoned,' Margery said.

She stopped dressing Margery's wound and looked out to the backyard again. ‘I could blame my mother for my shortcomings, but
that'd make me an even lesser person than I am now. She did what she needed to do to survive and be happy. I knew I was the apple of her eye.'

‘Have I got septicaemia?'

‘No.' Anita put Margery's shoes back on and tied her laces.

‘I'll survive then.'

‘You'd survive better with a flatmate.'

‘I've got Cecily,' Margery said.

‘Cecily?'

‘My twin sister, Cecily.'

Anita looked down the hall.

Margery put her hand on her heart and said, ‘She lives here.'

‘Oh,' Anita said, ‘your invisible friend!' She bound Margery's wound and took her cup of tea to the back step, where she sat, dug into her work basket and found nail clippers. As she talked she trimmed Margery's toenails. ‘Tragedy can have a ripple effect; it can go on down through all the generations.'

‘That's true. My mother was never the same after Cecily died.'

‘You looked like her, that must have been a comfort . . . or maybe it wasn't.'

Margery shrugged. ‘Anyrate, my father suggested it was best for me to move on. So I did.' She looked around the room. ‘Just now, she was here, it felt like she was right here, beside me.'

‘Mothers aren't perfect.'

‘No, but she should never have died alone in a nursing home. I know that for sure now.' She sipped her tea. ‘It's a shameful thing but my own dear, respectable, broken mother died alone in the middle of the night in a nursing home because I was stuck here with Haemorrhoid Face and two toddlers. What I should have done was gone to my own mother, taken her back home to Brisbane Street, stayed there to care for her and her sons, my brothers, lost and
drunken sods that they were by then. Drink got them, too, if the truth be known. I'm not sure why, it was just the way things turned out, but it had started well. We were all so united . . . Shirley was long gone by the time Mum got sick – she was the first to go after me – but our mother would have died herself rather than send anyone to die alone in the middle of the night in a ward full of snoring strangers and a male nurse reading a novel behind a glass wall.'

Anita stood up, patted the Nicorette patch on her arm and said, ‘You're absolutely right, Mrs Blandon. Absolutely right. I'm going to see my mother this very minute.'

As she was leaving, Anita glanced around the room and said, ‘I'll see you two girls next time.'