Let's Dance Read Online Free PDF Page B

Yet ten days later the place she thought of as home had reclaimed her, made her forget how anxious she had been to leave it in the first place: how nothing between the ages of eighteen and twenty-one had ever worked; how miserable she had been. All she could recall now was her arrival. No sign of Serena.No greeting. Instead a clash of sound from the tape deck in the long living room, reverberating and echoing over the whole house, shivering the timbers in a series of violent discords. Mother shouting above it, ‘I don’t need you, I need words!’ thumping the wall to make the kind of row that drowned thought. Isabel had paused, then rushed towards the noise, which stopped before she reached it. Serena’s eyes, defiant, met hers.
    â€˜The words are over there,’ she had begun, looking towards the desk, before a big beatific smile dawned in that stretched, ugly-attractive face and she had sprung towards her daughter with an energy that defied her years. Her hair was dull and her make-up odd: thick, pale foundation, brilliant blue paste over the eyelids. There were subtle changes in the month since Isabel’s last, fleeting, visit. Now she was here to stay. Make things better; do something properly.
    â€˜Darling! You’re so thin! My lovely child!’
    There was the strange sensation of being greeted by a duchess. A hostess who hid the fact she was expecting this guest and had been anticipating the arrival for some time.
    Isabel had melted into her embrace, drowned herself in it. ‘Shh,’ she had said, ‘shh, Mummy. It’s all right now.’ Saying the words and making the gestures she wanted for herself.
    â€˜I do love you,’ Serena had said. ‘I do, I do.’
    Had she ever said that before? Isabel could not remember, only knew how sweet it was to hear.
    â€˜I know you do. What a big hug! You never used to like hugging.’
    They had swayed together, Serena’s soft bosom surrendering the smell of lavender, her arms surprisingly strong.
    â€˜You never used to like music so much, either, sweetheart. What’s got into you?’
    Serena had withdrawn slightly, to arms’ length. Enough distance to look into Isabel’s face, caress her cheek, pinch it playfully, but in a way which hurt a little. Isabel had a dim memory of scratches over her buttocks from a lover. Affection carried scars. She had not flinched. The analogy of a lover continued, with her mother’s delicate hands on her own slim hips, the swelling stomach of the older woman pushing forward with great insistency, spreading against her own waist, the voice urgent with whispered confidence.
    â€˜Darling, you’ve come home at last. Let me tell you things …’
    T oday, the wind blew.
    â€˜Let me tell you something,’ George said to the dog as they plodded back across the fields. ‘Number one is that there’s far worse things than being on your own. Serena and I know that, don’t we? Believe me. And there’s worse things a dog can do than run sheep, or a man chase women, but I’m glad you’ve lost the habit.’
    The dog squatted, strained with total concentration. George looked at her with concern: trouble with bowels was a sign of age in a retriever, so he’d heard.Serena should stop feeding her pap. He thought how he would break up into little pieces if anything happened to this old bitch, and not only because she was the formal
raison d’être
for his being in Mrs Burley’s house. There would be far less reason for him to be there on a daily basis if there was no dog to walk: he could hardly take out that vicious little ginger cat which needed no guardian and already ate, slept and ran where it pleased.
    â€˜The worst thing you can ever be,’ George told the dog as they resumed progress uphill, ‘is too crowded. Penned up with a hundred other people, never left by yourself for a minute. Not when you squat, not when you