Illywhacker

She danced, without music, with hate in her heart.

"All right," he said. "Meet me down in the arcade on Wednesday morning and bring a photograph so I can get a sign painted."

25

She was nineteen years old; her eyes were clear; she was so young that Rosa could not even bear to contemplate it. She placed her hand next to Leah's, silently, as if the evidence presented there on the oilcloth-covered table should be argument enough: the corruption of one, the innocence of the other.

Leah's brow contained not a line. It was so smooth that Rosa ran the tip of her finger across it, from the bridge of her nose up into the dense curly blue-black hair that never, in any light, revealed the scalp beneath.

Rosa opened her mouth to speak and then shut it. What was there to say? How could she un-say all those dances, wind back all those scratchy pieces of silly music?

In just this way had she lost Joseph, through the power of her stupid mouth. But you could lose someone to Lenin with a clear conscience. You could not abandon someone to Mervyn Sullivan so easily.

Lenny, crumpled, unshaven, unhappy Lenny, said nothing. She could not meet his eyes. She knew she would see blame there. She felt blame enough.

So they sat, in silence, while the westerly wind buffeted the little caravan and rain dripped slowly through the leaking hatch in the roof.

Rosa would have liked to say some of the things she felt about Leah's decision. For instance: it suggested an enormous arrogance, to undertake this change of career for the benefit of people who had not requested it, people far tougher than she was who had – anyway -survived a lifetime of difficulty without such monstrous charity, this bright-eyed, shining One Fine Thing.

Yet she could not say this with any confidence because Leah stubbornly refused to admit that Lenny and Rosa had anything to do with it. She said nothing, not even half a hint, about sending them money and no one could bring themselves to ask her this most embarrassing question or say that whatever money she made she would need herself, that even if she starved herself on their account, she could not, on a dancer's wages, be a breadwinner.

The turmoil of this meeting will be best understood if you imagine Rosa, now, as the caravan rocks in the wind, begin to speak sternly, harshly even, and all the time stroking Leah's smooth pink-nailed hand, and both women's eyes full of tears.

Rosa and Lenny begged Leah, jointly and separately, to reconsider. They spoke badly of Mervyn Sullivan and painted unattractive pictures of life on the road. But all this flowed off her smooth and untroubled skin which was, like all young skin, thin as paper and thick as cowhide.

Leah, excited beyond belief at this daring swerve in her life, refused to admit that she had done anything earth-shattering. She was insouciant, arguing against the skipping rhythms of her heart.

"Why", she asked Rosa, "is a doctor superior to a dancer?"

Rosa flinched, feeling her own words turned into knives and used against her.

"When the bills come," Lenny said, "then you will see the difference."

"Leah, if this is for us…" Rosa began.

"No, Rosa, it is not for you." And indeed she felt that was true, and although she felt a little frightened of what she had done, she also felt an enormous relief. She was too stupid to be a doctor. She could not have borne another year of feeling so inadequate. Everything around her conspired to make her feel stupid, even Izzie whom she admired so much.

"When I was a young girl," Rosa said, "I used to dream that one day my mother would get sick and old and I would look after her. I would tell her, Mamma, I will look after you. She would smile at me. She liked me to say it to her. She repeated it to grown-ups to show what a nice girl I was. Later, when I was older, I did look after her, and I was happy to look after her. But I've thought about it lately, Leah, and I don't think it was a very nice sort of happiness. It was like a revenge: 'Now I have you. Now you will wash your hands when I say. Now you will eat your meal. It will be this meal – which I have cooked without consulting you – because I am very busy and you are a lot of trouble.'"

"So," said Lenny. "So what is your story?" He butted out his cigarette and then placed it, not in the ashtray, but on the top of the table, lined up with all the other butts each one of which had been put out at precisely the same moment.

"The story is that all young people dream they will control their parents. They wait, like crows, while they get weaker."

"But you are not my parents, Rosa."

"Then I will not have this on my conscience. We did not ask you to." She looked up and caught Lenny's eyes. He nodded his head slowly. See! he was saying. See!

"Yes?" Rosa said belligerently. "What is it?"

But Lenny would say nothing. He ran his tongue over his chipped teeth and studied her with his calculating man's eyes.