Page 88 - The Woven Tale Press Vol. IV #2

79
ing to dance. Edna used to love dancing. She met Bert at the Palais Royale Ballroom. They went back every week until the war started. She was heartbroken when the Palais Royale was reduced to a pile of rubble during an air raid.
she’s home before ten o’clock; it’s not worth being late. Once inside, Susan stands in the darkened hallway and sniffs, one long inhala- tion through her nose. She holds her breath for a couple of seconds and then exhales sharply. She feels her way to the living room door, hesi- tates, and then turns the knob.
(continued from page 68)
Bert was a lovely dancer, thinks Edna. She stops knitting, dropping her hands, still hold- ing the needles, to her lap, although she’s only midway through one line of stitches. There was often a live band at the Palais Royale. Popular tunes reverberated around the shadowy walls of the ballroom. As they danced, Edna became intoxicated by the smell of Bert’s Bay Rum af- tershave mingling with her perfume, Muguets de Paris, in the warm pockets of air between their bodies and faces. She was comforted by the snugness of her feet in slippery-soled, sil- ver dance shoes. She luxuriated in the glow of recently bathed skin against the cool slinkiness of her nylon underskirt. Pink and turquoise beams of light glanced off bodies as other couples swirled around the darkened ballroom, so close that sometimes a shoulder, the hem of a dress or an elbow brushed against her body. And, later, when rumba followed waltz with a foxtrot close on its heels, the room was tropical as a tango, Edna even relished the sharp scent of Bert’s fresh perspiration.
“Hello,” murmurs Edna. She’s counting stitches on her knitting needle from the light of a dent- ed brass floor lamp next to her chair. The Billy Cotton Band Show is on TV. A bespectacled Billy Cotton flickers on the screen in tones of grey, he’s telling a joke about a recent Irish immigrant, Paddy, who’s working the first day of his new job laying down sod for a lawn. The room is stuffy, both bars of the electric fire glow orange. “No, no, Paddy,” yells Billy Cotton from the TV, continuing the joke. “Green side up, Paddy, green side up.” The audience ex- plodes with laughter.
Dance lessons at the Maureen Lovage Academy end abruptly at nine-thirty. Susan makes sure
“Well, your own house isn’t supposed to have a smell, because it’s yours, and familiar, I sup- pose. So you don’t usually notice it. But other people’s places, that are strange, always smell funny ‘cos they’re different.”
Bert snores on the sofa, legs outstretched. Su- san sits on the mushroom-coloured carpet, and leans her back against Edna’s easy chair.
“I thought it was other people’s houses that smelt funny, not your own,” she says.
“What?” Edna asks, starting her next line of knitting, needles flying.
On the television, Doug Squires and his partner are doing a dance number. Susan studies their