I Hope You Dance (25 page)

Oh dear. I closed the document I was reading and straightened my spine.

“I thought things were going better.”

“Not that!”

I raised my eyebrows.

Maggie waved her hands about. “The whole thing. Hannah. Her awful life. She does
nothing
, Mum. And I mean nothing. Her life is pointless, and unbelievably boring and sad. All she does is watch TV and read the paper and wait for the district nurse or home help to come, or sit and feel depressed about her past. She has no friends. One of her sons phoned her up at Christmas and she told me the
entire conversation
about six times. I can't stand it!” She got up and began pacing around, waving her hands about some more. “Look at Nanny and Pop! Look at the difference. It's like Hannah has given up on life and is waiting for it to end. Her whole existence has been so meaningless and shallow she doesn't even know how bad it is.” She stopped prowling and looked at me.

“And what will they say at her funeral? Stories about when she was a teenager and went to some posh parties? Or won a beauty competition? How she snagged an impressive husband? You could sum up her last fifty years in one sentence: husband left, got old and ill. We have to do something!”

Maggie wanted Hannah to join U3A like Dad. I could see why, and agreed it could benefit Hannah tremendously, but getting her along to anything involving people, activities, going outside… it would take some doing. And I wasn't sure if U3A could handle Hannah Beaumont.

“What about the lunch club at Oak Hill? That might be a better place to start. I'll see if I'm free to pick her up. If not, I'm sure Nanny would give her a lift.”

“I'll ask her on Saturday. It's not like she's going to have anything better to do.”

 

That Friday was the first girls' night of the new year, postponed a week due to the holidays. It was the Big House's turn to host, and the huge old dining-room table groaned under the weight of Ana Luisa's Mexican take-away.

The evening was, of course, dominated by talk of the new romance. Ana Luisa floated about on a cloud of dreamy rapture, and it took a severe reprimand from Emily to stop her making excuses to knock on the study door.

We didn't mind. We were thrilled for her.

The Big House felt strangely empty. I stole secret peeks at the photographs of David and let my heart flutter. He was thinking of me. I thought about him too.

I started to settle into my new job – completing a day's formal debt counselling training and getting stuck into a new software package designed to simplify the church finances. However, Monday morning Martine asked if I would show the replacement cleaner the ropes.

“Dorothy!”

“Hello, Ruth.” Dorothy looked like a different woman. The boulder of shame and worry had fallen off her shoulders. She was still wan and worn, but there was a steel in her eye that surprised me.

“How fantastic to see you! How are things?”

“Things are going good, thanks, Ruth. Not great, but good. I've got my budget sorted and all those bills and letters – Martine took them away and fixed them. I'll be debt free in two years! And what with all the stress gone, I started to feel so much better Martine asked me to apply for this job. And I got it! I can't tell you how good it feels to be working again.”

“I'm so pleased for you, Dorothy. You look great.” I meant it. I was thrilled for her. But it felt as though a baby crocodile had hatched in my guts when I considered what unpleasant opportunities this might present to her son.

I was on my lunch break, eating apple and parsnip soup in the café, when she came to find me again.

“I'm done then, Ruth. I'll stick this lot in the outside bin and I'm off.”

“Okay, see you soon.”

She disappeared down the back corridor just before the glass door to the café opened and Carl swung in. His eyes scanned the half-empty room, and short of scrambling under the table, there was no way to avoid them landing on me. He grinned, and ambled over.

“Ruth. Fancy seeing you here. Happy New Year.” Mr Normal.

“Hi, Carl.” I pretended to study the sheet of paper in front of me, hoping he couldn't hear the hammering in my chest.

“I heard about the new job. Congratulations! You're moving up in the world.”

“Thanks.” I didn't look up.

“So, how's it going? How are you? Seems like ages since we've talked.”

Really? Is that because all your phone calls are silent ones?

“I have to get back to work.”

I cleared the half-finished soup over to the serving hatch, and shoved the paper and my water bottle into my bag with quaking fingers, my appetite vanished. I felt discomfited being rude to what appeared to be a polite man making friendly conversation. But as I hurried out of the door into the foyer, he moved right behind me.

“What a happy coincidence, Mum getting a job at the same place as you. I'll be picking her up most days from now on – you know, supporting her efforts to get back on her feet. So we'll be seeing a lot more of each other. It'll be like we're dating again.”

I couldn't help it. Running into the office I slammed the door shut behind me and leaned against it, scrunching my eyes closed, trying to shake off the prickly feeling that squirmed across my skin like a plated millipede. And now he had invaded my wonderful new job – tainted it with his poisonous promise. I would have been angry, if only I wasn't so darn afraid.

Over the next few weeks, a pattern began to emerge. Dorothy worked Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. On those mornings, my blood pressure would start to rise as the clock ticked towards lunchtime. I hid in my office, found errands to run, took extended toilet breaks. But Carl was an expert stalker. He would show up early to “grab a drink”, or be “held up at work” and turn up late. He popped in at the end of the day, as Dorothy had mislaid her purse again, or to double check the date of an event he'd spotted on the notice-board. Most of the other people in the building were bowled over by this charming, thoughtful young man. Only Martine kept a dubious distance. Perhaps in memory of the fake gun, Carl made no effort to convince her to do otherwise.

Maybe three or four times a week, the silent calls returned. There could be six calls one after the other in the middle of the day, or three staggered at hourly intervals through the night. I changed my number after the first week, but two days later they started again. I turned my phone off during the night, but the daytime calls intensified as a result, and it didn't stop the number of missed calls showing up in the morning when I switched it on again.

I could sense myself becoming jittery, paranoid. I saw flashy black cars everywhere, glimpses of spiky-haired men out of the corner of my eye when I did my shopping, heard footsteps on the pavement only to turn and find no one there. I felt safe nowhere, half out of my mind, doubting myself when I did bump into Carl and he came across as so respectful and pleasant. The worry whittled me back to a bag of bones in only a month. I considered resigning, going back to Liverpool, taking Maggie out of school and visiting Miriam in Australia. But the debt monster still reigned, trapping me in my present circumstances. And besides, I felt terrified that moving job, house or even continent would not be enough to shake this predator off my tail. I was being hunted.

Maggie had failed in her efforts so far to get Hannah “a life”. The excuses for avoiding any sort of group, club or activity aimed at
older people ranged from being too tired, too young, too ill, having too many appointments and the meetings being too boring.

It became a personal challenge to find Hannah an activity she couldn't refuse. “She won't go to groups involving food because of her dodgy intestines, or anything without men because it reminds her of boarding school. And now she says she won't go unless I go too, so it can't be a U3A group or one for retired people. As if anything could be worse than sitting at home all day! It's like she's mummified in her own misery.”

I shrugged. “You need to stop thinking of her as a project, and remember she's a woman under all that stubborn bluster. Once upon a time Hannah Beaumont knew how to be sociable, to let go and have fun. Just because she's elderly doesn't mean she suddenly likes knitting or bridge. What did she love when she was younger? What made her feel alive and beautiful? That's what you need to find. Then, make it so irresistible she can't refuse.”

“Mum. You're a genius.”

“So my mother tells me.”

The next Saturday, she had it.

“Where's Nanny?” She hurtled into the living room, where I sat huddled on the sofa with a book, trying to hide from the world and all its stalkers.

“Shopping. Did it go all right today?”

“Yes,” she yelled back at me, already halfway out of the door. “Pop. POP!”

“He's out too. Can I help?”

“No. Urgh! This is so annoying. Why are people always in your face bothering you, then when you actually want them they're out doing shopping or – where's Pop? Not with Booby Ruby?”

“No. Not on a Saturday. He's agreed to no one-on-one meeting up with female friends. And you really shouldn't call her that,” I added, a picture of self-restraint.

“Oh. So that's why he's been moping around the house like a kicked cat.”

“Yes. Today he's fixing Esther's leaky pipes.” I went back to my book.

“When will he be back?”

“When the pipes are mended.”

“Thanks, that's really helpful.” Maggie crossed her arms.

I sighed loudly, put my book down and looked up. “So what is it you're so desperate to tell Nanny and Pop that you can't tell me?”

“I've found an activity Hannah Beaumont cannot refuse,” Maggie said, her face glowing.

“Sky-diving? Pot-holing? No – I know – drag racing.”

“Dancing.”

I let out a burst of laughter at the thought of grumpy Hannah Beaumont dancing hunched over her Zimmer frame, then quickly swallowed it back at the look on my daughter's face.

“Not disco dancing. A tea dance. In a fifties style, like Hannah's heyday. With cakes and sandwiches, and proper, Hannah-standard tea with real leaves and fine china. We can decorate the hall –”

“What hall?”

“Oak Hill hall, of course. You work there. You can book it for us for a special price.” She started pacing up and down in front of me. “Anyway, stop interrupting. We'll have a swing band, hire a proper dance floor – you can do that; Misha did it for her party – and Hannah can wear her coming-out gloves and the pearl necklace her dad gave her on her sweet sixteenth. If she doesn't want to dance, she can sit and enjoy the music and think about all her happy memories. It'll be awesome!”

“It sounds like a lot of work for one dance,” I said.

“But that's the whole point – it won't be just one! That's why I need Nanny and Pop. They can start a group teaching the old people – well, whoever wants to come, they don't have to be old – to dance. Like, really simple easy dancing if you can't move very well. Zimmercise! And then when Hannah's a bit stronger, and her stiffened-up old muscles have remembered how to move again, we'll have the party. With, like, really slow music that even Hannah can
keep up with. She was a brilliant dancer, a proper ballroom one. She'll love showing off her steps.”

I looked at my daughter, her eyes shining under her spiky, brown, non-creative hair. I remembered a girl who spent her life inside her headphones, head down, face pinched.

“You know, I don't think you've thrown a single object in the whole of this year so far.”

“Mum! What's that got to do with anything?”

“I think it's a fabulous idea. I'm proud of you, Maggie. And if you can get Nanny and Pop dancing together again, I think you'll have stolen the title of family genius.”

“Hah. A Henderson girl's plan never fails.”

“Amen to that.”

 

Maggie used all her granddaughter's charm to persuade Mum and Dad to run an initial tea-dance taster session. She printed out a load of flyers, distributing them around Sherwood Court and the Oak Hill lunch club, Dad posted it as an event on the U3A Facebook page, and Mum badgered a few of her old dancing friends to come along. Hannah agreed to go on the condition that she didn't have to dance, Maggie made the tea and they played some Fats Domino.

It was a Thursday towards the end of January, and I had hired the smaller hall at Oak Hill. We needed twenty dancers to cover the costs. Five minutes in, the people in the hall consisted of Maggie, Seth and four of their friends, Hannah, Seth's great-granddad John, another couple from the retirement complex who had both arrived on mobility scooters, and me. Mum made some last-minute calls while Dad talked us through a warm-up. The mobility-scooter couple gave up after two minutes and sat back down on their chairs next to Hannah, wondering out loud when the tea was coming.

We quickly rearranged the programme, serving tea and cakes while three more people, guilt tripped by my mother, dug out their dancing shoes.

By the time they arrived and were served refreshments, we had twenty minutes left to dance. It felt like three hours. My parents, shiny smiles in place, managed to avoid touching or speaking to each other for the whole hour. The teenagers giggled and flopped about and flirted in the corner. Hannah point blank refused to get out of her chair. The mobility-scooter woman started getting chest pains and had to lie down on a sofa in the foyer. Mum's friends played along, but danced with all the enthusiasm of kids in a school country dancing lesson (we had those in Southwell – holding a boy's hand while stripping the willow – yuck!).

I danced with John. He was pretty smooth – I could see where Seth got his charm from. I was pretty smooth too. It felt beyond weird, being back in my parents' dance class. I was rubbish by Henderson standards, but after all those years I could still pull off a merengue.