Dance Lessons: A Novel

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183 After the visit to Father Bradley’s and the village, Ellen gets back late to the house in Knockduff. As she drives in through the farmyard gates, she sees only Ned’s mud-spattered car in its usual spot. Nurse Ryan’s blue car is already gone. It will be fine, she assures herself. After Nurse Ryan’s visit, Jo is usually exhausted, usually fast asleep. She drops her bag of groceries in the scullery, then walks up through the house to check on Jo. Empty. Jo’s bed is empty. The walking cane is gone. The bedding is rolled back and there’s Jo’s head imprint on the stacked pillows. It’s impossible. “Jo.” Ellen rushes through the parlor, the hallway, toward the downstairs bathroom. She runs up through the scullery, back out into the yard. Has someone come? Has Tom Fitzgerald summoned an ambulance? This is crazy. A sick old woman doesn’t just go missing, go walkabout. Ellen stands there, feeling useless and stupid. Then she turns back for the house and the phone. Voices. From beyond the upper yard and the line of sheds. First Ned. Then . . . Jo? Ellen rushes to the five-bar gate to the upper paddocks. Ned and Jo stand on a grassy path, just a hundred yards past the gate, their backs to the house and the yard. Jo leans on her cane. She’s dressed in an old winter coat with her nightgown peeping from underneath. She’s in a pair of pair of old boots; a bobble hat on her head. Ned’s hand flutters around her elbow, her back. 184 * Áine Greaney For the past two days, ever since the men and the baling machine have finished, the sloping fields are dotted with cylindrical hay bales inside their black plastic wrappings. Jo lifts the walking cane, jabs it high into the air, to the right, then the left, the bobble hat following her movements. Ellen walks to the gate and stands there, awkwardly, wondering if she’s not an intrusion, a voyeur. But still, Ned might need help. Jo jabs the walking cane again. “Didn’t he leave too much stubble?” The voice is high and quavering. “He should’ve cut closer up along the wall here.” “Ach no, ma’am,” says Ned. “Sure, they’re all leaving a bit behind them now. The new machines are all—” “—I don’t pay that fella to be only skirting the tops and the sides,” Jo interrupts. Ned doesn’t answer. They turn back for the house. Just over a hundred yards to the gate, but their approach is so slow, tap-tap-tap. And Ned, cap on his head and the cigarette trapped under the moustache, keeps pace. Stopping, starting, that perpetually impassive face. Tap-tap-tap. Jo’s toothless face is set with determination. From here, Ellen can see that her patient is winded, panting. Ellen opens the gate and rushes up the path to meet them. “Is she all right?” Ellen asks. “Ach, she’s grand. Just out for a bit of a walk, isn’t that right, ma’am? Out getting a bit of air and having an oul’ look at this year’s hay.” He looks at Ellen. It’s the closest that Ned has come to a smile. He nods to Ellen to walk along the other side, ready, waiting in case the cane slips, in case Jo grows more winded and falters. They cross the yard toward the house like this, one of them on each side of her. Stop. Start. Stop again. Jo’s raspy breaths compete with the pigeons in the orchard. A jerk of the elbow tells them that it’s time to stop again. The air and the birds are suddenly silent, time suspended, as Jo Dowd leans on her walking cane and takes in her yard, her house, the avenue down the hill. “I remember,” she whispers. “I remember the first time Mother Dance Lessons * 185 brought me down there. I was only four years of age, and she strapped me onto the carrier of the bike and she brought me down the hill to the village .” She shakes her head. “I’ll go to the gate,” Jo whispers, her breath wasting. “I want to see the front fields.” So they’re off again. Step. Step. On the way, Jo nods toward the orchard. “The...