Dancing in the Moonlight Read Free

anyway. Whoever heard of a bairn from round these parts – especially a lass – training for something like that? Where did these teachers
imagine the money was going to come from? It was all folk could do to keep body and soul together, and with the slump worsening, there were plenty who couldn’t even do that. Most of the
shipyards were on short time now, and Thompson’s would be next. Everyone was just waiting for the axe to fall.
    Gathering herself, Enid bent down to Agnes. ‘I’ll send our Jacob for the quack, lass, and your Lucy’ll stay with you. All right, pet? An’ I’ll take the others back
with me an’ give ’em their tea.’ It was a stroke, by the look of it, and it had taken her left side; the corner of Agnes’s mouth was dragging and her left arm and hand lay
still on top of the blankets.
    Enid couldn’t bear to look at her friend’s agonized face another moment. Turning, she glanced to where Ruby and John, each with a twin in their small arms, were watching her, tears
seeping from their eyes. ‘None of that,’ she said briskly, although for two pins she’d join them. ‘That won’t help no one. We’re going to leave your mam to have
a little sleep till the doctor comes and you can help me make a round of singin’ hinnies, would you like that? An’ I’ve got a fresh pat of butter to go with ’em.’
    Ruby and John’s countenances changed. If there was one thing they loved it was the little currant cakes that made a singing sound while cooking on the griddle and were delicious eaten hot,
with butter on.
    Agnes lay looking at Lucy in the stillness that followed, the only sound her daughter’s broken voice as she murmured words of reassurance. She was dying, she knew that, but she
hadn’t expected it to be like this, the pain in her head threatening to suffocate her and her throat closed up so that she couldn’t swallow. Her chest was aching with a fiery ache and
each breath was a conscious effort, but strangely the fear was fading as the light dimmed. She could hear Lucy saying, ‘I’ll look after the bairns and the house and everything, I
promise, Mam, you just rest now and don’t worry’, but she couldn’t see her daughter any longer through the blackness which had descended as the pain in her head became
unbearable.
    But then the pain stopped. Suddenly and completely. And at the same time an airy lightness came upon her worn-out body, filling it with pulsating energy, so that she was aware of every muscle
and sinew, filling her mind too, with an overwhelming desire to move forward.
    Through the darkness she could see a pinprick of something shining brightly in the distance and it was to this that she was drawn. She walked slowly at first, unused to the feeling of freedom,
and then, finding she was as light as a feather, she gathered speed, carried along on a wave of happiness which consumed her to the exclusion of everything else.
    The pinprick grew into a brilliant radiance, and now she was running forward with the joyful abandon of a child and smiling with every pore of her body; she was going home . . .

Chapter Two
    The day of the funeral was dark and overcast, but the severe snow storms which had swept the Northeast for a week had let up to just the odd light flurry now and again. An hour
ago the undertakers had come for Agnes’s body. This had been lying on a trestle table in the front room since Enid and another neighbour had laid her out, the brass bed having been turned on
its side against the wall. Walter had been adamant about this mark of respect for his wife and had slept in the bed in the kitchen since her passing. It was this same way of thinking that had
prevented Lucy from attending her mother’s funeral; her father didn’t hold with women and children being present, and nothing she had said had been able to change his mind.
    She looked across the kitchen now to where Enid was busy cutting up a fruit cake. Enid had brought this and several