Let's Dance by Frances Fyfield Read Free Book Online Page A

page in the light of the standard lamp behind her. Her fountain pen scratched across the paper with a sound which had begun to irritate, like the distant sound of a dripping tap. Isabel noticed how hermother’s glasses were scratched and dirty: the sight made her feel deficient. Ten days here, busy with reorganization and novelty, bathed in the glow of her own virtue and she had not noticed that her mother’s spectacles were less than useless. Or that what her mother wrote in these evenings and afternoons was likely to be scribble.
    â€˜A party, Mum! What do you think?’
    Serena sighed and put down the pen.
    â€˜A what?’
    â€˜A party!’ Isabel found herself yelling. Ashamed of it, she lowered her voice. ‘A party, Mum, for your friends. You know.’
    Realization dawned on Serena’s face. ‘A party? You mean a party?’
    Isabel found herself shouting again. She was looking at the paper Mother covered with writing, remembering the wonderful letters received at school, her own window on foreign worlds, the borrowed sophistication she had felt on receiving them, thinking at the same time of the letter she had written to Joe this week, the craven apology and all the anger dead. Do you love me? Does anyone to whom I have surrendered myself love me?
    â€˜I said, a party! I meant a party!!’
    Mother smiled, then shook her head.
    â€˜Lovely. But we couldn’t have a party without George. And George wouldn’t like it.’
    â€˜What does George matter?’
    â€˜George wouldn’t like it.’
    â€˜I’d like it.’
    The eyes behind the scratched glass looked preter-naturally calm and magnified into an owlish wisdom. The face was transfixed into a wide smile of artificial politeness as she picked up her pen again and spoke with dismissive precision out of the corner of her mouth.
    â€˜You’d like it? But you don’t matter at all.’
    Isabel counted to ten, slowly. It was not the first of the insults, only the neatest and, even in the euphoria inherent in the knowledge of doing good, being for once in her life Virtuous with a capital V, she had noticed them all. She dismissed them as she guessed she was meant to dismiss them, as part of Mother’s little insecurities. Less than that, in fact, simply a form of teasing, meaning nothing, surely, characteristic of the way her mother had always teased. The wounds and the hugs were synchronized.
    â€˜Love you,’ Serena said, without looking up from her writing, murmuring with the sighing distinction that only occurred in the evenings. ‘Love you lots. Do you love me?’
    Isabel did not reply. Then, ‘We need some more coal for the fire,’ she said.
    â€˜George got the coal in earlier. He brought it from the new place where the coal lives now. Bucket by the back door.’
    George did everything. He was polite, coyly deferential to Isabel, and did not flaunt his indispensability. He scuttled away when he saw her, but he still dideverything. It was he who understood this domain, he upon whom Serena relied.
    No. She needs me.
    The kitchen smelled, of stove and dishcloth and chips and warm dog. Beyond that door, the evening was bleak. Winter glowered. She did not like leaves drifting against the back door, the constant domination of the vast garden, the mud which clung to shoes and the silence of the stars at night. Hush, child: things done in the name of love are well worth doing. Loving and being loved; that was life. By the time she came back from the kitchen with the bucket of coal, the living room was full of sound. Mother’s tape deck was turned up high and Mother’s plump body blocked the fire, swaying to the sound. She clutched her skirts to reveal her stockings and wiggled her hips.
    â€˜Did you say party?’ she asked. Beamed.
    â€˜Pretend you’re a man,’ she said. ‘Let’s dance.’

C HAPTER T HREE
    H ome, sweet home. People are