There Should Be More Dancing Read Free Page A

meal when someone lands.’
    Pudding looked at the busy carpet and said, ‘The floor’s the right colour.’
    Barry explained that all the chairs had been removed from the balconies so people couldn’t use them to climb onto the balustrade to jump off.
    â€˜Occupational health and safety,’ Walter said importantly. ‘We keep the balcony door locked at the hostel too.’
    â€˜That’s because all the residents are drunks,’ Judith said, pouring the last of the champagne into her water tumbler.
    Walter ignored her. ‘We’re converting the lodging house into a hostel for international travellers.’
    â€˜You mean backpackers,’ Pud said.
    Walter lifted his chin and jerked his head to loosen his neck. ‘Job’ll be right.’
    The waiter appeared again and asked if they were ready to order. Judith asked for another bottle of champagne and the others turned their attention to the menu.
    Things were still relatively pleasant, even after the dessert dishes were cleared. Barry toyed with his nine-carat rolled gold cufflinks – the right cuff read ‘Sell’ and the left ‘Buy’ – and talked at length about some of the houses he’d sold, how he was set to make a fortune when the Brunswick boom reached Reservoir. Walter related to them again, blow by blow, how he’d won the 1983 middleweight championship fight against Archie the Annihilator. Pudding drank three vodka and red cordials, and on her way back from the ladies’ missed a step, fell into a potted palm but was righted again by Justin, the maître d’, before anyone noticed. Judith placed her palm on Mrs Parsons’ red beret and watched it disappear into her fuzzy Islander hair, explaining loudly and in great detail the process required to straighten it. Margery dropped a prawn and wasn’t able to retrieve it from the colourful fern fronds in the carpet. When she tapped the side of her glass with her bread knife to say a few words the waiter started tidying dishes. ‘Anyone require anything more?’ He leaned down to take Judith’s plate. ‘Coffee, perhaps, Mrs Boyle?’
    Judith said she’d ‘loveanothabottleashampers, thanks,’ and Barry said, ‘Just the bill, mate.’
    When it came Barry told Walter he could pay for his mother and Mrs Parsons, but Walter had only brought twenty dollars so Mrs Parsons gave him a five-dollar note and Margery paid the balance. They were standing to leave, Mrs Parsons turning from side to side between the armrests, when Walter said, ‘The watch, Judif.’
    â€˜Oh, yes!’ Pudding pulled back her mother’s sleeve and there, pressing into the flesh of her wrist, was Margery’s watch: delicate, pink-gold and ancient. Pudding unlatched it and Judith said, ‘You’ll love this, Marge. I got it fixed.’
    â€˜I paid half,’ Walter added.
    Margery took the watch gently in her soft fingers and was taken back to the dim, rarely used front parlour in her childhood home – and Cecily. They sat side by side on the couch, wearing their Sunday-best dresses, bows in their hair. Their mother was there, proud and pleased, their brothers and sisters squirming with suppressed excitement, and their father came slowly into the room in his dark, immaculate railway station uniform and stood ceremoniously in front of them. Margery thought she saw tears in his eyes. ‘You’re thirteen now,’ he said, and their mother dabbed her tears with a hanky. ‘Teenagers!’ he said, and from behind his back brought two flat, satin-covered boxes and held them out to the girls. Cecily wrenched the box from its pretty wrapping immediately, while Margery untied the ribbon and rolled it neatly around her fingers. Then she carefully peeled away the wrapping paper and folded it, smoothing it to an even square. Cecily snapped the clasp closed on her wrist – ‘It’s three