Dance While You Can Read online

  SUSAN

  LEWIS

  Dance

  While You

  Can

  Contents

  Cover

  Title

  Copyright

  Dedication

  About the Author

  Acclaim for Susan Lewis

  Also by Susan Lewis

  Acknowledgements

  Elizabeth

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Alexander

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Elizabeth

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Alexander

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Elizabeth

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Alexander

  Chapter 23

  Elizabeth

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Alexander

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Elizabeth

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  Version 1.0

  Epub ISBN 9781409008149

  www.randomhouse.co.uk

  Published by Arrow Books 2007

  2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1

  Copyright © Susan Lewis 1989

  Susan Lewis has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work

  This novel is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

  First published in Great Britain in 1989 by William Heinemann

  First published in paperback in 1990 by Mandarin Paperbacks

  First published by Arrow Books in 1998

  Arrow Books

  Random House, 20 Vauxhall Bridge Road,

  London SW1V 2SA

  www.rbooks.co.uk

  Addresses for companies within The Random House Group Limited can be found at: www.randomhouse.co.uk/offices.htm

  The Random House Group Limited Reg. No. 954009

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  ISBN 9780099517832

  The Random House Group Limited makes every effort to ensure that the papers used in its books are made from trees that have been legally sourced from well-managed and credibly certified forests. Our paper procurement policy can be found at: www.randomhouse.co.uk/paper.htm

  Printed and bound in Great Britain by

  CPI Cox & Wyman, Reading, RG1 8EX

  To Dad and Gary, with love

  Dance

  While You

  Can

  Susan Lewis is the bestselling author of twenty novels. She is also the author of Just One More Day, a moving memoir of her childhood in Bristol. She lives in France. Her website address is www.susanlewis.com

  Acclaim for Susan Lewis

  ‘One of the best around’ Independent on Sunday

  ‘Spellbinding! . . . you just keep turning the pages, with the atmosphere growing more and more intense as the story leads to its dramatic climax’ Daily Mail

  ‘Mystery and romance par excellence’ Sun

  ‘The tale of conspiracy and steamy passion will keep you intrigued until the final page’ Bella

  ‘A multi-faceted tearjerker’ heat

  ‘Erotic and exciting’ Sunday Times

  ‘We use the phrase honest truth too lightly: it should be reserved for books – deeply moving books – like this’

  Alan Coren

  ‘Susan Lewis strikes gold again . . . gripping’ Options

  Also by Susan Lewis

  A Class Apart

  Stolen Beginnings

  Darkest Longings

  Obsession

  Vengeance

  Summer Madness

  Last Resort

  Wildfire

  Chasing Dreams

  Taking Chances

  Cruel Venus

  Strange Allure

  Silent Truths

  Wicked Beauty

  Intimate Strangers

  The Hornbeam Tree

  The Mill House

  A French Affair

  Missing

  Just One More Day, A Memoir

  Acknowledgements

  My sincere thanks to G. V. Hardyman and Christopher Dale of Clifton College, Bristol. To Victoria Walcough of Christie’s, South Kensington. Lindsay and Bob Hall. My friend Fanny, who not only introduced me to Sark but gave me unstinted support throughout the book.

  A very special thank you to Patrick Early of the British Council in Cairo, and John Kelsey-Fry. And, of course, Laura and Toby.

  From the moment I met her, there was never any doubt in my mind that one day I would have to kill her. Perhaps it was a genuine vision of the future, though I recall no images, not even the vividness of the fire that was to consume so much. I felt only the overwhelming need to protect myself, and all that was mine.

  Elizabeth Sorrill. She was blessed with the kind of beauty I had only dreamed about, bringing love and laughter to my brothers, while all the time she nursed the pain of a love she had lost – a love she would never give up.

  And what right had she to that love? I am a woman, I have known love, I have known the pain of loss. Have I spent my life making others suffer for it?

  But I know now that I have never experienced anything like the love that bound Elizabeth and Alexander. It was a love that not only bridged the gulf of class, but survived years of parting, the agony of rejection, and that most destructive of emotions, guilt. Do I envy her that love? No, I pity her. A love of that depth, that strength, extracts its own price. I was the one to call in the debt, and I have no regrets. Why should she have had it all? What was her suffering compared to mine? My brother gave her the world – but it was my world too, and I lied, cheated and murdered to get it back. Yet all the time my enemy – my invincible enemy – was not Elizabeth, nor Alexander, but the love they shared.

  Why was their love so indestructible?

  I rest my head against the wall. There is nothing to see here, only darkness, but my nostrils flare at the cloying stench of my surroundings. Among the few, almost indistinguishable sounds, I can hear myself laughing. Laughing and laughing. The bitter irony of it is, if anyone could answer me that last question, then here, at the end, they would hand me the key to life itself.

  As it is, it is they who hold the key – Elizabeth and Alexander.

  – Elizabeth –

  – 1 –
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  ‘A schoolboy! You’re telling me you’re in love with a schoolboy?’

  Already wishing I hadn’t said anything, I met Janice’s incredulous gaze. ‘I didn’t say I was in love with him, I only said . . .’

  ‘Yes, I know what you said. You said you can’t stop thinking about him. And the way you’ve been moping around here, well, I can’t believe how dense I’ve been. But a schoolboy, Elizabeth. Do you know what you’re doing? Do you realise what it means?’

  ‘I’m not doing anything, and it means you’re getting everything out of proportion, as usual.’

  ‘You’ve been stuck down there at that school for too long, it’s turned your mind. Christ, I could understand if it were one of the masters. But a boy!’

  ‘If you saw him you wouldn’t call him a boy.’

  ‘Well, how old is he? Fifteen, sixteen?’

  ‘Nearly seventeen.’

  ‘And you’re twenty-one. And this is 1964, and you’re probably one of the most beautiful women I’ve ever seen in my life. You’ve got to get away from that place, Elizabeth, and fast. Junior matron at a boys’ public school, I ask you! I never understood why you went there in the first place. So what’s happened between the two of you? You haven’t . . .’

  ‘Of course not. We danced together at the end of term, that’s all.’

  ‘Danced! I can hardly get a word out of you because you danced with a schoolboy? There really is something wrong with you, Elizabeth Sorrill. I’m going to have to find you a man, and fast.’

  Janice liked her ‘and fast’s, but just at that moment they irritated me. I’d come to spend the summer holidays with her, in the bedsit we used to share in Putney when, like her, I’d been a nurse at the Meadford Clinic. But I’d only been there a few months when a vacancy had come up for a junior matron at Foxton’s Boys’ School, down in the west country. I’d lied about my age, collected my references from Mrs Carey at the Meadford, and gone. I’m not quite sure why I did it, except it seemed like a challenge and I’d never really felt at home in London. That was six months ago.

  ‘I take it you do want to find a man?’ Janice said, when she realised I wasn’t going to say anything.

  ‘You don’t have to say it like that, and as a matter of fact, I don’t.’

  ‘Elizabeth, think about it! This relationship can’t go anywhere, and you’ll land yourself in a whole heap of trouble.’

  ‘Stop moralising. I danced with him, that’s all, and I like him. He’s . . .’

  ‘Spare me. You’re going to tell me he’s tall, dark and handsome, and he’s got a winning smile.’

  ‘As a matter of fact he is tall, dark and handsome. And as for his smile, one of his teeth is crooked. What I was going to say was that he’s made me feel as if I belong at the school – not easy in a place like that. I have a lot of fun there now, more than I ever did flitting round pubs in the Kings Road. I’m happy, Janice. I feel as if I belong there, as if I have a place there – and it’s all down to him.’

  ‘Down to him?’ She looked at me and I could feel one of her ‘and fast’s coming. ‘Don’t you realise the effect you have on people, Elizabeth. No, you don’t, do you, you never did. Look at yourself. You’re all the things the rest of us dream about; sensuous, long-legged, voluptuous; you’ve only got to move and something happens to a man. Jesus, there are things about you . . .’

  ‘Janice . . .’

  ‘Like the way you make someone feel they’re the most special person alive. What’s the name of that song “From a Jack to a King”. Even the bloody sun comes out when you laugh. And it’s not just men, you have that effect on women too, so God only knows what you’re doing to those poor little buggers down there, locked away in that school. Try looking at yourself through their eyes. One day you just appear in their lives; you don’t speak like them, you don’t act like them, nobody knows anything about you. You’re a mystery . . .’

  ‘Stop talking rubbish. I’m just an ordinary person, Janice, like anyone else. I don’t talk about my past because it’s too painful. But you know what happened, how my parents were killed, then I came to London and trained – with you – as a nurse, so why don’t you drop all this nonsense about a mystery?’

  She sighed. ‘You really don’t know what I’m talking about, do you? You say things in that funny, rich, accented voice of yours and everyone stops to listen. I’ll bet he’s smitten: I’ll bet they all are. Well, I’m going to get you out of there, and fast. It’s time you came back to the real world. What’s his name, anyway?’

  ‘Alexander. Alexander Belmayne.’

  If her eyes had been any rounder they’d have burst out of her head. ‘Alexander Belmayne! The one you wrote to me about? The one you couldn’t stand, who made your life a misery?’ She covered her face with her hands. ‘Jesus, you’re in bigger trouble than I thought.’

  ‘You always dramatise everything, Janice. OK, so I didn’t like him at first, but only because I hadn’t got to know him. That’s all.’

  ‘That’s all! You nearly left at Easter because of him, remember?’

  ‘I wish I’d never told you now. And I’m going back to Foxton’s at the beginning of next term, so you can forget about finding me another man, another job or another anything.’

  ‘Then all I can say is, don’t come crying to me when he gets over his schoolboy crush. Except he won’t, will he? Men never get over women like you. It’s just left for the likes of me to pick up the pieces.’

  She flounced out, but I knew she’d be back. We’d quarrelled before and it usually ended with one or other of us storming off. It gave us time to reflect on who was right and who was wrong.

  But of course, Janice was right: I was ignorant of the way I looked, the way I was. And if I’d left the school then, as she suggested, got away, who can calculate how much pain might have been avoided? But all that seemed important to me then was that Foxton’s, a school of just over two hundred boys, should remain the centre of my world. I couldn’t see what I might be doing to Alexander, or he to me. Naturally there were others there, like Miss Angrid the senior matron, whom I’d come to care for a great deal, but it was Alexander who’d made me feel . . .

  But I’m getting ahead of myself. Things moved so fast, and so much happened that sometimes I have to think quite hard before I can remember how it all started. Then I laugh, because it is madness to think for one moment that I might really have forgotten.

  – 2 –

  It was just after lunch on a cold spring day when Miss Angrid, the senior matron, picked up her well-thumbed volume of Shelley and turned her chair to face the fire. ‘Well, at least that’s over for another six months,’ she said, referring to the medicals that had been going on for the past two and a half days. ‘Why don’t you treat yourself to the afternoon off, go and explore the village? There’s no point in hanging around here, unless you want me to read to you, that is.’

  She peered up at me from under her whiskery eyebrows, knowing full well I’d do anything rather than sit through a recital of Prometheus Unbound. She laughed as I grabbed at my starched cap and shook out my hair. ‘Beautiful,’ she said. ‘Too beautiful. I wonder if I’ve done the right thing, taking you on. Still, wouldn’t be without you now, even if you do run at the mention of Shelley.’

  I was on the point of making good my escape when Christopher Beadling, a spotty, skinny little thing from the second year, knocked and came in. ‘Left my blazer behind, Miss,’ he said, and looking at me he blushed and started to snigger – along with the boys who were huddled around the ‘grub’ cupboard outside.

  ‘Next door in Miss Sorrill’s surgery,’ Miss Angrid answered, then looked at me. ‘No idea what they’re planning?’ she said, after he’d closed the door behind him.

  ‘Not a clue.’ But they were up to something, that was clear. Some kind of initiation ceremony Miss Angrid had called it, when she’d warned me that the boys would be bound to take advantage of my first night duty alone. ‘Insufferable beasts!’ she s
aid now, and went back to her book.

  I’d been at the school almost two months by then, and was settling in quite well, although I still felt quite overawed by my surroundings sometimes, and had to pinch myself to make sure I wasn’t dreaming. The whole place was much grander than I could have imagined, with its endless gilt script lists of honoured old boys and its portraits of Foxton’s achievers. The corridors were dark and dank and smelt of beeswax and boiled cabbage. The boys were such a contrast to their gloomy surroundings that I was still sometimes surprised when I heard them stamping around and shouting and laughing. And the way everyone spoke made me wish I could be rid of my rounded, half west country half London accent, and become one of them. But I was working away quietly on that, along with everything else. Ever since I’d arrived I’d felt a kind of excitement bubbling away inside me. It was as if I was waiting for something to happen; like a chrysalis almost ready to burst.

  When I got outside, because the sun was shining and I’d seize on any excuse not to have the embarrassment of using Tonto, I decided to walk back to the cottage.

  Tonto was the nickname the boys had given the golf-cart that Miss Angrid used to ferry herself to and from the cottage where both she and I lived, she on the bottom floor, I on the top. ‘Quite self-contained, quite separate,’ as she had told me when she’d first shown me round. It was on the edge of the school grounds, closing the only gap in the thick hedge on the south side of the field beyond the rugby pitch, and sandwiched between Foxton’s copse – five trees, some bushes and a pond – and the farmland behind. From my bedroom window I could see the statue of Arthur Foxton, the school’s founder, far in the distance, standing in the courtyard in front of the school like a general in front of his army.

 
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