The Mirror Dance
Welcome to our regular feature showcasing the talents of the nation’s best writers.
August Sunday afternoons, in my fond childhood memories and therefore still in my hankerings, are golden, with lawn chairs – nay, hammocks – set out in the graceful shade of a beech tree and bumblebees providing a lullaby. Full of lunch, one waits for tea, turning the pages of a book and banishing all thoughts of Monday.
On this Sunday afternoon, the first day of August, I was huddled over a fire in my sitting room with the windows shut tight against a squall of chilly rain, lamps lit already and the next day, a bank holiday, promising the same again. What is more, since no one expects to light a fire in August, the wood was not quite seasoned and offered more smoke than warmth. I clicked my tongue to encourage Bunty, my Dalmatian, to join me on the sofa. She is large and Grant, my maid, tells me her stiff white hairs are the very devil to brush out of tweed, but she is a furnace in any weather and marvellously comforting. At that moment she remained on the hearthrug, curled into as small a ball as a spoiled Dalmatian can curl into, grunting a little as her well-fed middle constricted her lungs, not deigning to move away from the fire despite my entreaties, although she gave me a regretful look from under wrinkled brows, in compensation.
The telephone bell was a welcome intrusion. I stood and fairly scuttled over to my desk. Reaching for the earpiece, I expected to hear the voice of Mallory, my daughter-in-law, with a plea for help. Her twins, at fourteen months, had just got their legs under them and were now proving daily that Mallory and Donald’s modern view of child rearing was exactly the muddleheaded nonsense I had known it to be from the day the twins were born and she began rumbling about their swaddling clothes. It was all very well when they could be put on a blanket and left to kick their legs, and it was hardly more trouble when the worst they could do was shuffle around the parquet on well-padded bottoms, gazing at stairs and doors as though at iron gates. Now, though, all was lost. As soon as Lavinia first hauled herself to her feet with fistfuls of curtain silk clutched in her fat little hands and took a wavering, staggering step towards her brother, the need for a sharp nanny increased threefold. These days, hand in hand and thereby acting as mutual ballast, they charged about day nursery, night nursery, downstairs and garden like a four-legged dervish.
About the author
Catriona Mcpherson is the award-winning author of contemporary novels and the Dandy Gilver historical mystery series. of which The Mirror Dance is the latest (Hodder & Stoughton, price £21.99)