Our Dancing Days. Lucy English

dear, Molly, I didn’t realise, I should have written. Have you got a phone yet?’

      ‘Oh, no, Mr Bell won’t have it … shall I tell him you’re here? He will be pleased, Donald.’

      ‘We shouldn’t have come,’ Tessa whispered to Dee-Dee.

      Molly led them through the porch and into the blackness of the Hall. It smelled of wet stone, damp rush-matting and woodsmoke. Dee held Tessa’s hand. Molly opened the door in the panelling. Light through the high church windows streamed onto an old collection of broken furniture, stuffed animals under glass, piles of books, Indian dhurries and half-dead geraniums. The great hall was lofty and damp, there were broken window panes and on one of the rafters was a bird’s nest. Beside the stone fireplace, in which a few logs smouldered on a heap of ashes, was an armchair, and in this slept an elderly man in a dressing gown. They moved closer and Tessa could see he wasn’t really old but had the shrivelled yellowish appearance of the terminally ill. His dressing gown was brown checked wool, bought for someone once larger than he. His wrists were thin.

      ‘Mr Bell, Mr Bell,’ said Molly shaking him gently, ‘there’s somebody to see you.’

      The sick man opened his eyes and smiled. He had a kind face, which even illness could not hide. ‘Molly? Is it tea-time already?’

      ‘No, Mr Bell, there’s Donald to see you, come all the way from London.’

      Don rushed over and shook his hand enthusiastically, but Tessa could see how upset he was, he had not expected to find his cousin so frail. ‘Geoffrey, it’s been ages.’

      ‘Dear Donald, what a surprise. Let me see you, doesn’t he look like George, Molly, a blonde George.’

      ‘He’s brought some friends, Mr Bell.’ Molly pushed Dee-Dee and Tessa nearer.

      ‘What modern ladies … and you too Donald, quite the thing, and such a shirt.’

      ‘Oh, everybody in London wears this sort of stuff, Geoffrey.’

      ‘“With it”, that’s what they say now, isn’t it?’ He held Don and Dee-Dee’s hands. ‘How splendid of you to come all this way, and such beautiful ladies …’

      Dee-Dee’s knees went pink.

      ‘Molly, make some tea, bring out your best fruit cake. Donald, find some chairs, and let’s celebrate.’

      An hour or so later everybody was relaxed, laughing and stuffed with Molly’s cakes. She kept running into the kitchen to make more sandwiches. ‘There’ll be no more food left at this rate, Mr Bell.’

      ‘Never mind, Molly, tomorrow we’ll get Ram’s to deliver.’

      Geoffrey insisted his guests be well fed. ‘I like to see ladies with good appetites.’ He offered Dee another slice of fruit cake. She was completely taken by him, he was absolutely charming. She gazed at him rapturously.

      ‘What beautiful hair you have, my dear, like the ripest wheat in the afternoon sun …’

      ‘Geoffrey, you are a one, you used to say things like that to my mother.’

      ‘Quite right too, Hetty was a beauty, still is. Her and George, so romantic, they were. They still write … Young lady, boys these days are not romantic. Is Donald romantic?’

      ‘Donald?’ And they screamed with laughter.

      ‘But tell me, George says you’re “dropping out” of Oxford.’

      ‘Yes, yes, I am, and I’m not going back … Oxford’s dead, Geoffrey, everybody’s so out of touch. I want to read about Ginsberg and Kerouac and Michael X, not dead people. It’s all happening now, in people’s houses, in pubs and on the street, Geoffrey. Art and literature isn’t stuffed away in libraries, it’s alive … Tessa and Dee-Dee, they’re artists, they know, it’s not just paint and paper, is it?’

      ‘No.’ Geoffrey was smiling knowingly.

      ‘It’s true, Geoffrey, it is. What do I get if I stay at Oxford, a degree, a piece of paper? I’ll know all about Milton and Shakespeare and Donne, oh they’re OK, but what about Bob Dylan … it’s poetry, it is … don’t laugh, Geoffrey … it’s got meaning and rhythm and most of all it’s got life … I don’t want a job and work from nine to five, I want to … Be … Read Thoreau, Geoffrey, and Tolstoy and Gandhi, and William Morris and Steiner and Huxley, they got it right … oh yes, and Jesus …’

      Geoffrey was laughing. ‘And Jesus … what it is to be young!’

      Don’s face was pink, but he wasn’t embarrassed; he was never embarrassed. Tessa and Dee-Dee exchanged glances. Don was the most un-hip creature on earth but he could be pretty inspiring.

      Geoffrey was quiet. He poked the dying fire with his walking stick.

      ‘We were all young, George, Hetty, and I, we all awaited the imminent transformation of the world …’

      Molly hovered behind them. ‘Don’t let them tire you, Mr Bell.’

      ‘Molly, you take good care of me.’

      ‘Are you tired?’ asked Don. ‘Shall I show the girls the rest of the house, I know they’ll love it.’

      ‘It’s not like it was, my boy.’

      ‘We don’t mind, do we, it’s years since I was here.’

      ‘This is the kitchen,’ said Don. China sink, one table, pots and pans hanging from the beams. ‘Hetty said it was impossibly archaic. We used to come here every summer. This is the breakfast room.’ An Aga, a long table, a sofa under a window which looked out over the moat. A stone floor. ‘The dairy’s in there, nobody uses it now. You see, it was a farm here before Geoffrey.’ Up winding stairs. ‘That’s Molly’s room, it’s private.’ Another bedroom. ‘This is the solar.’ A pile of old furniture covered with dust sheets, a huge bed, carved. ‘I think Geoffrey sleeps downstairs now …’ More bedrooms, more stairs, Dee-Dee and Tessa were quite lost. ‘I always slept in here, it’s called the chapel because it’s above the porch. In winter there’s ice on the inside walls, can you imagine? We only came here once in the winter, though … This room’s above the hall, my sisters slept in here.’ The ceiling had fallen in, there was more unused furniture. Don examined some. ‘I think it’s his mother’s, my great-aunt, it all came here when she died. Oh look, the hat stand, I do remember that …’ Up more stairs, down more stairs, narrow corridors, everywhere damp and dusty and crumbling. Don looked out of a window at the courtyard. ‘I love this place,’ he said thoughtfully.

      ‘What will happen when Geoffrey …’ Dee-Dee couldn’t bear to think of him dying.

      ‘I suppose it’ll be sold. George said it should have been sold years ago. Geoffrey could never really manage it. When we used to come down George used to help, but … I don’t know, Geoffrey wasn’t well, we grew up, Hetty and George, they’re getting old too … I like Geoffrey, I wish I’d seen more of him now …’

      ‘It’s so sad,’ said Dee-Dee and a tear ran down her face.

      Three of them in a car all the way back to London and Dee-Dee sobbed copiously because Geoffrey was going to die. He had bravely walked to the door to see them off, leaning on a stick and helped by Molly, and that was Tessa’s last memory of him, a sick gentleman in a dressing gown.

      ‘Bye-bye, Don old boy, come again soon.’

      ‘I will, Geoffrey, I promise, I’ll come and see you.’

      ‘Goodbye, ladies, so pleased to have met you. Goodbye, goodbye,’ leaning on Molly and waving his stick until they were all out of sight.

      Some weeks later, Don was with Tessa. She was painting a mural in a friend’s flat in Fulham. She was covered in paint and the walls and the floor were covered in it too, but it was cool, it was OK.

      ‘…