Dancing in the Dark (2 page)

‘Don't touch it!' she shrieked. ‘Whatever you do, don't touch it.' I picked it up by one leg and dropped it out of the window, but she was trembling as though it really had been poisonous.

Another time she shook me awake, demanding to know if I smelled burning, and it took me nearly an hour to convince her that the building wasn't on fire. She was always looking over her shoulder as though she could somehow forestall the next bad thing about to happen to us. I'd wake sometimes and find her standing over my bed staring at me with tears rolling down her face. When she caught me eating a chocolate bar which the man at the corner shop had given me she snatched it away, saying it could be poisoned.

Because she was so obviously unhinged, it seemed easier to go along with her. The pace of our travels accelerated. Morocco, Turkey, India, Mexico, California; it seemed like every week she was pulling out the suitcases and we were off once more. In Mexico, she fell again and sprained her arm, though luckily it wasn't bad enough to prevent her from carrying out her engagements. Of course, she claimed that
he
had tried to kill her again, but she would never explain who
he
was, so I ignored it.

My poor mother. I loved her, but living with her was exhausting. It was hard to cope with her. If I could have taken on some of her burden, I would have done, but I didn't know how. As it was, all I could do was be there in case she needed me.

And then, one evening, she dropped the bombshell which brought everything to an end. ‘I'm going to India,' she said. We were in Warsaw at the time, living in a room at the top of a tall, pockmarked building which had once been painted yellow. She was doodling in her sketchbook.

‘India, again?' We'd been there a couple of times before – I'd even been born there. I remembered standing on a quay somewhere and watching our bags swing down into the hold, labelled
Not Wanted On Voyage
.

‘I could rent a houseboat, somewhere isolated,' she said. ‘I can easily get work, there's a rich maharajah who'd do anything for me.'

To me, India was long hills reflected on still water, chimes ghostly in the dusk, crimson silks and tarnished cushions, polished brass and the smell of incense, and along with that, too much diarrhoea and not enough loo paper, scavenging, importunate traders, people, payment demanded, discomfort. ‘Can't we go to Russia instead? India's full of horrible flies. And I'd love to see some of the paintings in the Hermitage.'

She put down her pencil. ‘Darling . . . don't be upset . . . but I'm not taking you with me this time.'

‘What do you mean?' My mouth hung open with surprise.

‘It's time you went to school.'

‘I do. Every day, in case you hadn't noticed.'

‘A
proper
school. An English boarding school. All this chopping and changing, moving about. You're almost twelve years old and it's time you got an education.'

‘I've already got one.'

‘Only the other day you were saying that you've been to nine different schools in six different countries and you never have any friends.'

It was true. ‘But I've always got you.'

‘Of course you have. But you need girls your own age. You'll make
lots
of friends. Didn't you say just yesterday that you wished we could be normal?' She leaned towards me. ‘That's why I've enrolled you at a convent school. The same school as my friend Terry Cartwright's youngest girl. Jenny, she's called. She's the same age as you; she'll be starting at the same time.'

I could see she was serious. I banged a fist on the table. ‘You're trying to get rid of me!' I screamed. I didn't think I could bear the pain of being separated from her. ‘Is it because . . . don't you love me any more?'

‘Darling, don't be silly.' Tears came into her eyes. ‘Of
course
I love you.'

‘If you truly did, you wouldn't make me go to horrible England.'

‘It's not horrible.' She tightened her mouth. ‘Besides, you're English yourself and it's time you lived there.'

She wasn't going to change her mind, I could see that. How did she think she was going to manage without me to look after her? Who'd see that she ate properly, or press her costumes before a performance or supervise her new routines? ‘So that's it,' I said. ‘No discussion, no arguments. Just, boom! Theodora Goes To Malory Towers?'

‘It's called St Ursula's.'

‘I don't care
what
it's called. I'm not going.'

‘You are. You have to.'

Tears welled in my throat. ‘No! No! Don't make me go, Luna!' It was all too much. I began sobbing. ‘Don't send me away.' I'd never been away from her in my life.

‘I promise you that once you've settled in, you'll love it,' she said.

‘Please let me stay with you.
Please
.' Hard as I tried to hold them back, the tears carried on coming.

‘Oh, darling. Don't you think I want you with me?' She was crying, too. ‘Of course I do. I can hardly bear the thought of being without you. But racketing round the world with me isn't doing you any good. And school is something we all have to do.' Out in the street a car backfired and she pressed her hand to her chest, half starting out of her chair. ‘My God! Was that a gunshot?'

‘Of course not.' I forgot my own fears and once more set about soothing hers.

Five days later, we took a taxi out to the airport. ‘Don't worry, darling,' she said, staring round the crowded concourse and then holding me tightly against her. There were tears on her cheeks. ‘Oh, Theodora,' she murmured. ‘I love you
so
much.'

‘If you really did, you'd let me stay with you.'

‘I can't. One day you'll understand.'

I recognized the finality in her words. ‘You'll look after my father, won't you?' I said resignedly.

She stared at me, blood draining from her face. ‘Of course,' she said, after a pause.

‘I don't want to go.' I began to cry.

‘You'll be OK, my darling. Remember . . . remember that I'll think of you every single day.'

‘When? What time?'

‘Five o'clock, sweetheart. Every evening at five o'clock. Now, don't worry, when you get to London, someone will meet you.'

‘How will I know who they are?' I said, but she was already hurrying away towards the exit.

As she had promised, someone did meet me when I arrived at Heathrow. The man who claimed me was wearing a suit which even I could see was of superb cut and material. The pink rose in his buttonhole perfectly matched his silk tie. ‘You must be Miss Theodora Cairns,' he said, holding out his hand. ‘I'm Hugo, a friend of your mother's.'

He took me off to a big London hotel for the kind of tea I'd only ever imagined: tiny savoury sandwiches, scones and clotted cream and strawberry jam, plates of cakes. I'd never seen so much food in one place. ‘If you can't eat it all,' he said, ‘we'll ask them for a paper bag and take the rest with us.'

‘Where are we going?'

‘To the Cartwrights,' he said.

‘Are they the ones with a girl the same age as me?'

‘Jenny,' he said. ‘Yes. Didn't your mother say?'

‘She didn't tell me much.' I reached for another scone.

‘I wonder why that was.'

‘Because I might be indiscreet,' I said. ‘That's what she said, anyway.'

‘Indiscreet? What about?'

I shrugged, reached for another sandwich. ‘Are you English?' I asked.

‘No, I'm from Boston, Massachusetts.'

‘My mother's from Canterbury-in-Kent, so how did you meet her?'

‘I met her years ago, when she was a little older than you are.'

‘What was she like?'

‘Funny. Interesting. Pretty, just like you.'

Was I pretty? I stored the possibility away, while Hugo poured another cup of tea. ‘She was always dancing,' he said. ‘We used to call her the Dancing Queen.'

‘That's a song.'

‘Yes. She and her parents were staying with some friends who had a house in France, with a pool and a lake and tennis courts and everything, and I was there too, with my parents. I remember one day, your mom was dancing along a tree branch which hung out over the lake – and suddenly it broke.' He leaned back and sipped his tea, watching me.

‘What happened?'

‘She fell in with this almighty splash.'

‘Honestly?'

‘Cross my heart. And what a splash that was! It must have been one of the biggest splashes ever seen in France. There were eels and ducks and herons and minnows flying all over the place. Frogs, too. Even a couple of boats, with people who'd been fishing.'

I recognized a brilliant storyteller. ‘What did she do then?'

‘Just went right on dancing.'

‘Even in the water?'

‘Not in it, on it.'

I could see it clearly, the heavens dark with birds and frogs, fishing lines trailing from the clouds, black-bereted men in the sky peering over the edge of their boats to see what had happened. And Luna dancing on tiptoe across the sparkling surface, her supple hands catching rainbows from the sun. ‘That's typical of my mother,' I said gravely.

‘I think you may be right.'

‘I wish I was back with her.' I tried not to cry. ‘She really needs me. I don't know why she's sent me away, or what I did.' I dabbed at my eyes while Hugo tactfully looked away.

‘You did nothing, Theo. Absolutely nothing,' he said, wiping his mouth on his napkin. ‘Just remember that she loves you more than anything in the world.'

I didn't see or hear from her again for more than ten years.

T
he dream is frequent, the place familiar. I am alone in a garden bounded on three sides by yew hedges, on the fourth by the many-windowed stone frontage of a house. Elaborate parterres surround beds of white pebbles or, sometimes, white flowers. Always, the thick, aggressive smell of box fills the air. As I stare up at the house, I am aware that someone I can't see is looking down at me. Spying on me. A man. Sinister. Malevolent. Always dressed in black. In the dream, I've never met him, but I know who he is.

There is no way into this garden, no way out. What lies behind those blank windows? What lies?

For weeks, England has been sweltering through a heatwave. Hosepipes have been banned, drought officially declared. Every day, the newspapers publish images of dried-up riverbeds, parched fields, cracked earth. Pundits pronounce on the dangers of global warming and the rising incidence of melanoma. Sales of sun-block rocket. Gardens die.

I've been away for three weeks, visiting clients in the States. Now, I let myself into my silent house. It's early evening and the musty unused air still holds the day's breathless heat. Dropping my bags, I push open the French windows and step outside. Although I am prepared for damage, what I see is even worse than I'd feared. My herbaceous borders are dry and dishevelled. Flowers hang listlessly from sagging yellow stalks. There are ominous patches of bare soil, which will mean gaps next spring. Brown-edged roses droop; leaves wilt. The meadow-grass in the orchard, once the refuge of crickets and grasshoppers, larks and field mice, lies flat, veldt-coloured against the dry earth. There's no need to visit the bog-garden I've been working on for the past year; it's all too easy to visualize the scummy rim of the pond, the stink of stagnant water, dead fish floating.

I feel physically sick. At least Marnie, my part-time secretary, has watered the tubs outside the French windows; I can see that the containers of white pelargoniums, the pots of herbs, are green and healthy. But everywhere else, the water-butts are long empty. Unless we get some rain, it will take me weeks to bring the garden round.

And suddenly, as though I've personally conjured it out of nowhere, a drop lands on my shoulder. Followed by another. Amazed, disbelieving, I look up at the sky. A swell of dark cloud is rolling in from the west. The weather is breaking at last. More beads of water fall, heavier this time, and almost immediately become a deluge. Raindrops whack and drum against the path, bounce up and fall back. Within seconds, the stone flags are streaming with water. Rain plunges steadily from the sky.

Eyes closed, I raise my face and let it stream over my head. In minutes, my silk blouse is soaked. I slip off my sandals and stand barefoot on the path, relishing the wet until at last, as the temperature drops, I run shivering back into the house.

So far this has been a lousy day. Hot, sweaty weather, the heaviest day of my period, one of those crazy I-hate-the-world New York cab drivers who got me to Kennedy with only just enough time to check in. Not that it mattered because after we'd boarded the aircraft, one of those spuriously reassuring airline voices announced that there would be a short delay while the engineers rectified a minor technical fault. Don't even
think
about stapling those wings back on, I wanted to shout. Load us on to a different plane, and let some other poor bastards plunge to their deaths over Greenland. But of course I said nothing. I just sat there, in the stifling heat, with a splitting headache and menstrual cramps, longing to get back to my Cotswolds home.

The flight attendant passed round newspapers. Headlines flashed in and out of my head like summer lightning –
BUSHFIRES IN SYDNEY, FLOODS IN OHIO, RAIL DISASTER IN BENGAL
. I read a piece about the joys of being a mistress (
‘How the Other Half Loves'
), an article on the giant panda, the well-connected wife of a banker going public about her cheating lover. I'm in too much discomfort to concentrate. There are more reassuring noises from the cockpit, more dull aches in the pit of my stomach, temperatures soaring.

And, to top it all off, my car developed a flat on the way home from Heathrow and the AA man took ages to come and change it.