Danse Infernale

What do you get when you fall in love?

A girl with a pin to burst your bubble;

That’s what you get for all your trouble.

I’ll never fall in love again;

I’ll never fall in love again.

The wind was loud that night. As if possessed by a banshee. It was no wonder that Luke woke up; the true marvel was that his younger sisters had slept through it.

There were three of them. Katerina, at nine, was the eldest. Dark-haired, looking much like her mother, she was quiet, musically gifted, already studious, and above all serious. She seemed to live in fear of Luke; as if sensing that there was already ‘something of the night’ about him.

Then there was six-year-old Paulette. Paulette our poppet, people would say. Lighthearted, bright, full of sunshine: her father Bartie had delighted in her, and doted upon her. There was no doubt that she had been his favourite, and that she missed him most keenly. Luke abhorred her. He enjoyed tormenting her. Since his father’s death, he would often sit at the end of her bed at night-time, telling her dark, twisted stories that would leave her in floods of tears. Anything to wipe that sickening smile off her face.

Paulette loved dancing. She was forever pirouetting and prancing around in the drawing room; sometimes to Katerina playing on the piano, but more often to the tinny, tinkling tune produced by her music box. It was very well-known, apparently. Luke couldn’t remember the name of the composer - only that it was Russian - but the tune was called The Firebird. Luke couldn’t abide Paulette’s dancing: but he liked the music. Not long after their father’s death, he had stolen her music box, and hidden it in his room. Sometimes, if he woke up in the middle of the night, he would play it, before going back to sleep. He found it strangely soothing.

Finally, there was Josie. Just eighteen months old, Luke found her tedious in the extreme. Yet, even though she was little, Luke sensed there was something different about her. Not her personality: for what personality could you expect a baby to have? All it did was cry, and gurgle, and shit. No, it was her appearance. There was something about her that just looked different.

Luke was tired of people commenting on his appearance, Not so much his ginger hair: his father had been ginger too, so that wasn’t so unusual. No, it was his peculiar eyes, one green, one blue: that was the cause of their curiosity. There was a name for the condition, Bartie had once told him. Heterochromia. Just a word. A label.

‘You’re a freak, boy. Don’t forget it.’ His Uncle Harold had whispered those words into his ear three months ago, as he had stood, dry-eyed, watching the bearers lower his father’s coffin into the gaping maw in the ground.

Luke looked up at his uncle, and his eyes burned with cold anger. ‘I won’t,’ he promised himself. ‘And I won’t forget you telling me so. Ever.’

***

Luke listened to the rafters, creaking in protest as the autumnal storm howled around. It was a wild night, for sure. He threw back the covers, and slipped his feet into the slippers next to his bed. He thought about going over to his trunk of toys, where buried deep beneath the building bricks, Action Man figures and Matchbox cars, Paulette’s stolen music box was hidden.

Music...

Despite the wind, Luke fancied he could hear snatches of music from somewhere. Curious, he opened the door of his room. There was a chink of light showing from under the door at the far end of the landing. His mother’s bedroom: that was where the sound was coming from.

Luke grabbed his dressing-gown, and padded noiselessly across the landing. He recognised the melody, now; it was a song that had just reached the number one spot in the UK pop charts. His mother had been singing it, he remembered, earlier that evening.

What do you get when you kiss a girl?

You get enough germs to catch pneumonia;

After you do she’ll never phone you.

I’ll never fall in love again;

I’ll never fall in love again.

Creak-creak-creak... went the rafters, making their own music.

No! The wind had died down momentarily, amplifying to Luke’s ears not only Bobbie Gentry’s Mississippi vocals, but that other, rhythmic background noise. It wasn’t coming from rafters, or floorboards, or walls. Like the song, it was emanating from his mother’s room. As Luke drew up to the door, listening intently, he recognised what the noise was.

Not the creaking of wood, but the squeaking of bedsprings. Accompanied, he could tell now, by the sound of heavy, laboured breathing, and moaning.

The door was closed. Luke placed his hand on the doorknob, and was about to turn it, when a different sound from within made him freeze. It was a voice. A man’s voice: one that he knew well, and loathed with passionate intensity.

‘C’mon, baby - feels good, doesn’t it? I’m better than my brother, aren’t I? Go on - tell me, baby…’

What do you get when you give your heart?

You get it all broken up and battered;

That’s what you get a heart that’s shattered.

I’ll never fall in love again;

I’ll never fall in love again.

Luke’s eyes blazed with fire.

***

Harold Thomas sat up in his dead brother’s erstwhile matrimonial bed, and took a long, satisfying drag on his cigarette.

If only Bartholomew could see us now, he mused, glancing at the framed wedding photo on the chest of drawers opposite that Emily still kept on display. He looked across at the peroxide blonde form of his sister-in-law, perched on the edge of the bed. She was studying herself critically in her dressing table mirror, all the while dabbing away at her face with a pot of facial cream; almost naked save for the flimsy covering of her short, pink see-through negligee.

Harold had lusted after his sister-in-law for a long time, even before she’d married his younger brother on a particularly cold Saturday afternoon in October 1956. Seven years later (soon after the birth of Bartie and Emily’s third child, the nauseatingly sweet Paulette), Harold had sensed his opportunity. Bartie doted upon the new arrival, but couldn’t see that his wife was suffering from a severe dose of ‘baby blues’. Three kids in seven years: Emily feared she’d never regain the figure of her youth.

Is this all that I’m for now? To produce babies to the satisfaction of James Bartholomew Thomas? Emily had asked her mother. Her unsympathetic response had been to tell her daughter to stop being so silly, and to pull herself together.

That’s what we’re for, dear. That’s why women get married.

But Emily wanted to be loved for herself again. The agony aunts in the newspaper advice columns she read avidly called it the seven-year itch. Too right! If only Bartie could be kind and considerate to her needs - more like the way her brother-in-law increasingly was towards her. Maybe she’d just married the wrong Thomas...

And so, six months after Paulette’s birth, Harold finally got what he had always wanted. A cuckolded brother. The cuckoo chick herself didn’t arrive until four years later. The giveaway (for those who had eyes to see it) was precisely that. Josie’s eyes. So like those of her real father!

Bartie’s heart attack three months ago had been an entirely unexpected boon. Harold couldn’t have been happier. Up till then, the affair had perforce been carried out in ad hoc fashion, furtively, hurriedly. With Bartie’s death, things were made very much easier. The night after they’d buried him, Harold had finally made love to Emily in his brother’s very own bed. If this doesn’t make Bartholomew turn in his fresh, newly dug grave, nothing will, he’d boasted to Emily.

The only fly in the ointment was the eldest kid. His antipathy for his uncle was clear. Quiet, plain Katerina, anxious to avoid trouble, kept herself largely to herself; and Paulette was too young to be a much of a nuisance; but Luke was a different story. The way he sometimes stared at people, with those evil, queer eyes of his... Well, Harold Thomas wasn’t going to be spooked by an eleven-year-old boy. Maybe, given time, he’d work out a way of disposing of the brat.

‘You know, we should get married,’ said Emily, suddenly, turning to her lover.

Harold looked at her, dumbstruck. What had the silly cow just said?

Emily took in the look of incredulity on Harold’s face, but was determined to say her piece. She drew back the sheets, and slipped back into bed next to him. ‘For the sake of the children,’ she continued. ‘They need a father.’

‘You’re kidding… right?’

‘No, Harry.’

He frowned. He hated it when she called him that. Just because everyone had insisted on called his brother by that ridiculous shortened name...

‘No, I’m serious, darling. I know it’s not right just yet - it wouldn’t look decent - but you will think about, won’t you?’

He looked at her, unsure what response to make to her ridiculous suggestion. He opened his mouth - then paused, and sniffed the air. What was that strange smell? There was something familiar about it...

Emily reached across, took the cigarette from his nicotine-stained fingers, and stubbed it out decisively in the ashtray on the bedside table next to him. ‘I really wish you wouldn’t smoke in bed. It’s dangerous.’ She snuggled up next to Harold, resting her head on her brother-in-law’s hairy chest. ‘You know you set my heart on fire - but I’d rather you didn’t do it literally, darling.’ She giggled.

What was that smell?

The door suddenly burst open.

Emily instinctively shrieked. She sat up with a violent start, knocking the transistor radio from her bedside table. The crooning of love songs abruptly stopped as it smashed into the floor.

‘What the...?’ Harold Everett Thomas halted, as if frozen, mid-sentence. He was unable to move. The sight before him defied belief.

There, framed in the doorway, stood his nephew Luke. He was dressed in his deep blue, towelling dressing-gown, worn over pale blue pyjamas. Partially visible from beneath the boy’s gown, Harold could see that they were decorated with patchwork elephants; and the phrase Elephants don’t forget popped unbidden into his head. Next to his nephew was a tall can of petrol, taken from his own garage next door. The floorboards upon which the boy was standing looked wet. In his outstretched hand, Luke held a burning rag.

‘Yes, I’m a freak, uncle,’ said Luke. ‘And, unlike my baby sister, I don’t have your eyes.’ The rag fell to the floor.

Emily’s eyes widened in horror. She hid her face behind her hands in a futile gesture of defence from the gruesome sight, screamed - and screamed again.