Grandmother Ison loved to dance. She was more spirited than the Isons, who were dour, pessimistic and hectoring, the slow flame of grievances nudging their hearts along. Even though Great Aunt Beulah wore her down, cruelly pleased to have someone at her beck and call, Grandmother Ison danced to remind herself of who she had been before she married into the Isons. For a start, she was not born to be a Methodist—she liked a sip of sherry and she loved to dance. Try to imagine that these crossed sticks are swords, Anna dear, she said. Hands on hips, back straight, on your toes, knees high, this is how we do the Highland Fling. Anna wore a heavy pleated tartan skirt, white socks, black shoes; her ribboned hair bounced against her spine. The skirt flowed, divided, lifted and fell, and for the first time in her life she sensed her body, its grace, ease and arrogance. Bravo, Grandma Ison said. Anna’s mother confided: She used to teach me too, on the quiet. It’s not that my Dad was against dancing, but he’d grown up in a very strict household and never really approved of it, so Mum and I used to practise in the woolshed when he wasn’t looking. I would love to have gone to balls and dances when I was a girl. I’ll take you dancing, Anna’s father said, and he whisked the children and their mother off to the Woolshed Dance at Showalter Park. The woolshed, a dark, echoing, six-gabled stone chamber the size of half-a-dozen houses, with stands for sixty shearers, was on the National Trust register. Nothing would ever crack or shift it. As two hundred pairs of feet stamped upon the hardwood floor, and dust and cigarette smoke gauzed the air, Anna and Hugo dangled their legs over the edge of a wooden platform and watched the women spin their skirts, the men their glossy shoes. Behind them the band sawed and thumped. Anna itched to dance. She rocked on her haunches, bobbed and swayed, then stood, and felt her feet begin to move. She danced through the evening, a solitary figure caught in the repeating rhythms of the greasy night. She turned thirteen and was not convinced of her beauty. Long, angular, small-handed, composed of hipbones, ribcage, elbows and ankles—who would want her? Besides, there was the question of her luck and of her unlucky age, thirteen. But she did not want Mr Wheelwright to pair her at the last minute with a boy who had a pocked, milky face and hadn’t had the courage to ask that singsong question: Will you be my partner for the Polonaise? She reasoned that if no boy was going to ask her, she would do the asking. Six weeks before the high school ball, she asked a boy from the schoolbus on the Bitter Wash line, and he blinked, sidled past her, side-mouthing: If you like. The school’s tennis courts were weeded and swept, a record player was set up in the corner, and the Head quivered upon a wooden chair above the snaking line of couples: Remember, your parents will be there, Mrs Showalter and her son will be there, the mayor will be there. I’m counting on you not to let the school down. The Polonaise is a stately march, children. Flow with it, heads high, bodies graceful. At the mid-point of a long winter, when the women of Women’s College seemed closed-in and crabby, the street rallies futile and Lockie touchy and easily hurt, Anna sought to clean and sharpen herself. The leotard folded into almost nothing. None of her friends ever went near the draughty back streets of the city, where poky shops dispensed tattoos and fast haircuts, and light-stepping, big-bellied, beehived women ran first-floor dance studios, classical and modern. Anna dipped, whirled, leapt, and heard her bare feet slap convincingly on the varnished floor. It gave her courage; it gave her shape. Connie said, as they showered and changed after class: Coming for a drink? It was an unlikely friendship. Hard knocks had scored lines on Connie’s face and a wry, dry rasp in her voice. She smoked and drank and took taxis. Anna was not long married to Sam Jaeger when the town council voted to bring the Mechanics Institute up to ballroom standard. The floor proved to be fast; crystal chandeliers distributed the light. Now there was a reason for a Tennis Club Dance, a Football Club Social, a Cricket Club Hop, and a New Year’s Eve Ball to outmatch the one in Yarcowie. Anna had not seen Chester Flood since the old days. His white dress shirt looked very white, his black suit very black. The old, assaying stillness and concentration were still there, and she saw that he was better looking than she’d remembered. He drew back his head to smile at her, witty, courteous and shrewd, his hand firm in the small of her back when they danced. Complicated feelings of loyalty, luck and dishonour made her feet fast, her colour high, her eyes alive, her body half-yielding. She floated home, and Sam said to her at the wheel, as the headlights played over stone walls and foxes on the prowl in the starlight: I saw you, don’t go thinking I didn’t. You and him and that bloke who got killed, you were pretty tight in the old days. There are not so many opportunities for dancing any more. The policeman has given up on the Blue Light Disco, for the kids want booze, amphetamines, video clips and something to sharpen their hopes for a job. The Bowls Club Social is coming up next week. Anna has promised a potato salad. She likes to dance with Sam, his slow, sturdy, regular beat, and with her brother, who is jokier, clumsier, a familiar slice of herself. The 150th Jubilee Committee has pledged a Gala Ball for the Year 2000 celebrations, maybe an Olympic athlete to present the Belle and Beau of the Ball. In the years to come, stiff, creaking gentlemen will sometimes take Anna to a supper dance, where the music will tinkle obligingly. Her granddaughter will enrol in a Saturday morning ballet class, but, soon after managing the splits, lose interest in favour of horses and charms for her bracelet.