Page 74 - The Woven Tale Press Vol. IV #2

65
The Last Waltz
The second Saturday in October 1959 is when fifteen-year-old Susan Brown first attends the Maureen Lovage Academy of Ballroom Dancing on the assurance that she’ll learn to jive.
Susan glances down at a few morsels of cooked meat pushed to one side of her yoke-smeared plate. When she was confronted with the usual Saturday fried egg and slab of ham, greasy, pink and undulating, Susan wasn’t sure if she’d be okay. She performed her usual ritual, cut up all her food carefully with a knife and fork before putting anything in her mouth. This time it was all right — as the likelihood of an altercation appeared less and less likely, the feeling that she would have difficulty swallowing receded — but she still couldn’t bring herself to finish.
“It’s not just the old-fashioned stuff — waltzes, and that,” asserts Linda Hill, Susan’s friend who lives down the street. “There’s rock ‘n’ roll as well.”
“Can I go to dancin’ school?”
It’s a good time to ask. Tea has finished without any arguments. The damp northern English afternoon is drawing to a close. The window’s grid of iron-framed panes has drained of day- light. Susan’s mother and father each light up a cigarette; her mother, Edna, takes a long drag. She stares with narrowed eyes at her husband, Bert, Susan’s father. It’s okay, she’s just looking, thinks Susan.
Fergus, Susan’s older brother, wipes his plate clean with a slice of white bread, thick as a doorstep. There are times when Susan mar- vels at Fergus’s ability to chew lustily on great mouthfuls of food, even during the most rancorous of quarrels. Having eaten, Fergus sprawls belligerently in his chair.
A yellowing parchment lampshade dangles from the ceiling, casting a circle of artificial light that illuminates the table. The electric fire gives off a dusty hot-metal smell. Fake embers glow orange between black-painted chunks
“Can I?” asks Susan. “Can I go dancin’?” “You what?” asks Bert.
of coal. Through a rip in the make-believe coals, made when Susan’s father accidentally dropped his pewter mug of pale ale last Christ- mas, Susan can see the glare of the lightbulb that illuminates the pretend embers. The beer was soon mopped up and the brown rug never showed any stains. No reason that Susan could see for yelling and screaming, especially not at Christmas — but there never seemed to be any good reason that Susan could discern for the ferocity of her mother’s tantrums.
“Dancin’, at the Maureen Lovage School. You know — on the main road. Seven o’clock. Lin- da’s goin’.”
“Dancing, Susan,” says Edna. “With a g. Going, with another g.”
“Yeah, well, can I?”
“Aren’t you a bit young for dancin’?” asks Bert.
Andrew SMith