Dancing in the Dark by Susan Moody

want to do.’
    â€˜Too right.’
    â€˜Just think about it, Miss Cairns. That’s all I ask.’
    â€˜I’ll think about it,’ I say. ‘The answer will still be no. By the way, what’s the cat called?’
    â€˜Cat?’
    â€˜The one under the piano.’
    He studies the Siamese’s insolent blue gaze for a moment. ‘It was probably Gin Seng. We still have his great-great-grandson, also called Gin Seng.’
    Gin Seng? Luna told me the cat’s name was Frankie, after Frank Sinatra, because of its blue eyes, and of course I assumed she knew. I feel like a gullible fool.
    Bellamy stands at the front door, already reaching for his cigarettes. ‘Look, why don’t you come over to Shepcombe some time? It’s not that long a drive. You might understand more then. And of course you’d get to see the gardens – if you haven’t already.’
    â€˜I’ve been there,’ I say. ‘I’ve met your mother several times.’
    It seems extraordinary that the Honorable Constance, well-known garden designer, has been hanging on my wall for years, even if only as a figure in the background. She’s tall, angular, extremely snooty, beautifully groomed. A type that makes me uneasy, makes me conscious of the earth still under my fingernails, the bramble-scratches up and down my arms. She has an American drawl and a way of looking at you as though you’re an invading bug.
    As soon as Bellamy’s gone, his big car spewing out blue smoke as he backs out of the gate, I rush back inside the house. In the cloakroom, I double up over the pedestal and vomit, retching acrid yellow bile into the bowl. I clasp my hands round my body, holding myself together while the room closes in on me, wall advancing to meet wall, floor rising to the descending ceiling. I’ll be crushed if I don’t get out, out – then I am scrabbling at the door handle, gasping for breath, let me
out
, slamming the door back on its hinges and stumbling into the narrow spaces of the hall, where I lean against the wall, face sweaty, head hanging, mouth bitter.
    After a while, when the waves of dread have receded a little and my chest has loosened up, I stand in front of the empty hearth and look up at the portrait. Luna’s lies pierce me.
Oh, darling, you should have heard him playing the piano,
she would say,
it was beautiful. Chopin, Mozart, Debussy, yes, John seriously considered becoming a professional pianist, he could have been anything, singing, oh, such a beautiful voice, Schubert lieder, Strauss, Handel,
‘röslein, röslein, röslein röt’. She sang softly, and I would glimpse a younger, happier Luna long since lost inside the sheath of her sadness.
His beautiful voice, he couldn’t go anywhere without being asked to sing. Yes, he could have been anything, played tennis at championship level, Wimbledon, Roland Garros, that’s why he’s wearing white in the picture,
and when I said, but those are cricket flannels, she had continued, seamless as a cloak of invisibility,
Tennis, cricket, you name it, darling, he was so handsome in his white clothes, and a hero, of course, an officer and a gentleman. His men adored him, they would have followed him to the ends of the earth. He loved gardens – he created that one in the picture and, of course, he loved cats, we’d have one ourselves if only we were able to settle down somewhere.
And sometimes when she hugged me, I’d feel tears on her cheeks.
I’m so sorry, my darling,
she would say
, so sorry that it worked out the way it did, that he died without ever knowing about his little girl, his precious gift from God. I never got the chance to tell him I was pregnant with you – oh, if only he’d never gone out that evening, just down to the post office with a letter, if only it hadn’t been raining or the man in the other car hadn’t been drinking, the accident would