Free There Should Be More Dancing by Rosalie Ham

cross-stitched pillow covers and face washers to the loud, cheerycarers, then went to the day room to play piano for the residents, an assortment of distorted figures slumped in cushiony chairs like discarded frocks. Some men crowded around the fridge. They’d been there, asleep in their wheelchairs, since lunchtime because Happy Hour started at four o’clock and they longed for their one free glass of beer. If Nurse Graham or Nurse Garry was on, they always got two. Christmas and St Patrick’s Day, three.
    Kevin pulled a chair up next to his mother’s armchair and put Fifi in her lap. Pat screwed her nose up and said, ‘That dog stinks,’ so he put her on someone else’s lap. Generally the old ladies loved to goo at her and pet her, though Fifi preferred to lick the carpet squares. Kevin looked sideways along the line of frayed grey hair standing out from the wing-back chairs, and said, ‘Hello ladies,’ switching the TV to the sports channel.
    â€˜Mrs Bist’s place sold for $650,000,’ he said to his mother. Kevin had desperately wanted to buy Mrs Bist’s house. He’d haunted the estate agent and lobbied Mrs Bist’s fellow volunteers at the opportunity shop, but Mrs Bist’s niece sent word from America that the house was to go to auction. So Kevin was first at the auction, eyeballing the auctioneer, his raised hand visible from the very back of the crowd. As soon as the bidding started, a surly bloke – Tony, as it turns out – and his substantial accomplice, Dennis, a short, thick man with stiff white hair and colourless skin, arrived to flank him. ‘I’ve got nine hundred thousand dollars to spend on this place, mate. Cash. But I’d prefer not to spend that much, if you know what I mean.’
    Kevin’s bidding paused, and Dennis took up the lull. But Kevin tentatively raised his hand for six hundred and thirty-nine thousand nine hundred dollars. Then Tony leaned in and said in his ear, ‘You live over the road, don’t you, Kevin ? Ride a pushbike to the city every day, eh?’
    Kevin looked into Tony’s eyes, and brought his hand swiftly down.
    Suddenly, Pat turned her dull, blue eyes to Kevin and said, ‘Mrs Bist? She got a prolapse from all those babies.’
    Margery said, ‘Mrs Bist didn’t have any babies.’
    Pat focussed on Margery, her expression defiant. ‘Well, who did all those children belong to?’
    â€˜She got them from St Joseph’s,’ Kevin said.
    She turned on Kevin, ‘You’re not suggesting that the priests –’
    â€˜No!’ he said. ‘St Joseph’s . . . the orphanage.’
    Kevin brought the conversation back to Mrs Bist’s house. ‘They knocked Mrs Bist’s house down, Mum. They’re building a new one – architect-designed. I wish I could have bought that house. I could renovate it, put a tenant in, retire. It’s my greatest wish to retire, Mum.’ Forty-five years as a salesman at a menswear store in the city had taken its toll on Kevin, especially since he had never possessed a name tag declaring anything more important than ‘Relieving Manager’.
    Pat wasn’t listening, so Margery filled the silence with an old English proverb, ‘If wishes were horses, beggars would ride,’ just as a kitchen attendant, a long-nosed woman with prominent teeth, her dark hair caught up in a ponytail, wheeled the tea trolley in and started up-ending cups and sploshing milk into them from the two-litre carton. Then she spooned two sugars into each cup, held a giant teapot over the lines of cups and ran it up and down without lifting the spout. Tea ran off the side of the cart and disappeared into the carpet squares.
    Pat pointed to the trolley and said, ‘There’s a horse.’
    The attendant, rattling the spoon around the teacups, rolled her eyes and said in a broad Irish accent, ‘There’s no horse