Free There Should Be More Dancing by Rosalie Ham Page A

here, Pat.’
    â€˜Yes there is,’ Pat said. ‘I can see it.’
    The attendant dumped an arrowroot biscuit and a plastic cup half-filled with beige tea on the table in front Pat. ‘There’s no horse in this room.’
    Margery, thinking of pixies in Irish gardens, imaginary gods on clouds in the sky, and acknowledging her habit of talking to Cecily, said, ‘It might be an invisible horse.’
    The attendant said, ‘Then its poo is invisible, so no one will see it and they’ll walk it all over and I’d be all day cleaning it up.’
    The male nurse who was pouring the beer for Mr McNickle checked the soles of his shoes and winked at Margery.
    Margery declined an offer of a cup of tea and played a few tunes. A couple of nurses got one or two of the residents up onto their feet for a dance, and just when everyone was having a lovely time, Kevin said it was time they were off, and they left.
    The last time Margery saw her, Pat was busy shoving the tea-soaked paper serviette down the spout of her feeding mug with a plastic straw.
    Back in the womb of her cosseted fabric-and-cotton walls, Margery took the frozen chicken from the freezer and left it to thaw in the sink. She had just flicked on the television and settled with her Sao biscuits with cheese and sliced tomato to watch David Attenborough’s Tiger – Spy in the Jungle program when Kevin came striding down her passage, his helmet light flashing and his bicycle shoes clattering on her linoleum. He walked straight past her, down her back steps and into the shed. Margery made a mental note to remember to keep the screen door snibbed. He came back and stood in her lounge room, the exaggerated crotch of his reflective orange lycra bodysuit blocking Margery’s view of the tigers on the television. ‘Mum’s gone. She ran away just after dinner.’
    Margery said, ‘At least she’d had something to eat. She’ll have her strength.’
    â€˜Well, that’s just it,’ Kevin said. ‘She’ll have enough strength to walk straight under a tram.’ He tugged his cycling gloves on and said, ‘She’s not in your yard, or the shed. I’m going to search for her,’ and clacked down the passage again. David Attenborough said he was going to use elephants equipped with cameras to enter the world of the tiger for an intimate look into their lives.
    â€˜Fancy . . .’ said Margery, and bit into her Sao biscuit.
    Saturday night passed like any other Saturday night at 253 Gold Street. Margery ate her dinner, took her tablets, careful to drop the sleeping pill down the plughole, and went to bed early with her transistor radio on Magic Radio Best Tunes of All Time. She reclined in the dark, watching out to the street, the streetlight opposite illuminating the passers-by. She dozed and woke, dozed and woke, and through the disjointed night she saw Tyson and his mates kicking a football up and down the street. It bounced onto Kevin’s front verandah and broke his wind chime. He burst through the front door, objecting strongly, so the boys kicked it through his front window. Waves of harmonica and you-done-me-wrong music floated to her from the pub, and then she heard the patrons singing as they spilled onto the street and lurched past her front window. A slip of a girl stood swaying outside her gate, her dress, the smallest dress Margery had ever seen, sparkled in the lamplight while her friend, a smart-looking chap in a striped suit, tried to break into a car. The girl looked up and down the footpath, then she opened her little purse and was about to vomit into it when she saw Margery’s letterbox, so she flipped up the top and vomited into it instead.
    â€˜Got it,’ her friend said, opening the car door, then he grabbed her and kissed her passionately.
    â€˜ Tsk ,’ said Margery and hopped out of bed to bang on her front window, but it was too late. The hoodlums