There Should Be More Dancing by Rosalie Ham

hear you actually play the piano.’
    â€˜Good,’ Margery lied. ‘I’d prefer not to have to play.’ She popped her sheet music back in the piano seat.
    They’d been gone less than five minutes before Lance and Bill tottered down to the pub – Bill, short, round and breathless in a vinyl bomber jacket and Kmart jeans beside Lance, a tall and immaculately turned out man in a mustard-coloured cardigan and grey turn-up trousers. His mouth was open, sucking in air, a green tube reached to the oxygen cylinder rattling behind him, the little trolley wheels going tweet tweet tweet .
    So Margery found herself at the top table, the Legacy leaders’ table, a dignitary to her right and Pat on her left, before her a sea of soft brown and blue curls, ample-bosomed ladies, floral and pastel with fleshy earlobes, wattle and dewlaps, all maintained by step-ins and various prosthetics.
    Before her, propped against a saucer of geranium petals surrounding a floating Chrysanthemum, was a white card advising the day’s proceedings. First on the program was the local choir, who sang ‘God Save the Queen’. The assembled ladies then sat through number two, ‘Welcome Speech by the Chairwoman’. Number three, ‘The main meal will be served’, was either chicken or ham salad, followed by number four, the choir singing ‘Morning Has Broken’ while the ladies enjoyed a fruit compote with custard. For number five, a lass from St Joseph’s school read a composition titled ‘The Effects of War on Those Left Behind’. Her story was based on the life of her great-grandmother, who had grown her own vegetables and milked her cow and ploughed her own fields during the war with the help of the Land Army. And then it was Pat’s turn. The MC said, ‘I give you Pat Cruickshank and this month’s address, titled “The Unseen Effects of War on Women”.’
    Pat bared her teeth to Margery and said, ‘Any fruit seeds stuck to my dentures?’
    â€˜No,’ said Margery, and Pat turned to stand up. At that moment, Margery noticed the tag poking out the neck of Pat’s cardigan. ‘Hangon,’ she said and reached up to tuck it in, when the catch on her wristwatch caught one of Pat’s curls as she rose.
    Margery had no idea Pat wore a wig, no idea her hair had snapped off and fallen out after years and years of peroxide and perming fluid, and so Pat stood frozen before the room of fellow legatees, her rival addressees, past and future, the thin tufts of her brittle hair flattened against her shiny, damp pate and her wig dangling from Margery’s wristwatch.
    Finally, someone started clapping. Pat had turned deep, deep red and the audience, moved by her brave humility, started to applaud thunderously.
    Pat replaced her wig to present her speech, her nasal, bandsaw timbre uncharacteristically subdued, and the chairwoman then gave a moving address about being brave and the silent effects of war, relating how, because there were no dentists and no money, a lot of women lost their teeth, and a lot of women suffered back injuries and prolapses from labouring work, and this, coupled with nervous conditions caused by the hardships of war, meant they had fertility and hormonal problems, which of course, in many cases, led to hair loss. She asked for a show of hands from everyone in the room who’d lost hair because of the war. No one owned up to hair loss but everyone put their hand up for loss of teeth, most owned up to nervous complaints, one for a bowel prolapse and two for uterine prolapse.
    Afterwards, Margery pulled up outside Pat’s house and turned to apologise again, but Pat slammed the passenger door so hard the window popped out of its runners and fell into the door. Lance had the window fixed, but it was never the same. Even after so many years had passed, each Saturday and every second Thursday, at every bump the window rattled and