I MEANT WHY DON’T YOU DANCE?
“’Cos I’m old, that’s why.”
YOU ARE AS OLD AS YOU THINK YOU ARE.
“Huh! Yeah? Really? That’s the kind of stupid thing people always say. They always say, My word, you’re looking well. They say, There’s life in the old dog yet. Many a good tune played on an old fiddle. That kind of stuff. It’s all stupid. As if being old was some kind of thing you should be glad about! As if being philosophical about it will earn you marks! My head knows how to think young, but my knees aren’t that good at it. Or my back. Or my teeth. Try telling my knees they’re as old as they think they are and see what good it does you. Or them.”
IT MAY BE WORTH A TRY.
More figures moved in front of the firelight. Death could see striped poles strung with bunting. “The lads usually bring a couple of barn doors down here and nail’em together for a proper floor,” observed Miss Flitworth. “Then everyone can join in.”
FOLK DANCING? said Death, wearily.
“No. We have some pride, you know.”
SORRY.
“Hey, it’s Bill Door, isn’t it?” said a figure looming out of the dusk.
“It’s good old Bill!”
“Hey, Bill!”
Death looked at a circle of guileless faces.
“HALLO, MY FRIENDS.
“We heard you’d gone away,” said Duke Bottomley. He glanced at Miss Flitworth, as Death helped her down from the horse. His voice faltered a bit as he tried to analyze the situation.
“You’re looking very…sparkly…tonight, Miss Flitworth,” he finished, gallantly.
The air smelled of warm, damp grass. An amateur orchestra was still setting up under an awning.
There were trestle tables covered with the kind of food that’s normally associated with the word “repast”—pork pies like varnished military fortifications, vats of demonical pickled onions, jacket potatoes wallowing in a cholesterol ocean of melted butter. Some of the local elders had already established themselves on the benches provided, and were chewing stoically if toothlessly through the food with the air of people determined to sit there all night, if necessary.
“Nice to see the old people enjoying themselves,” said Miss Flitworth.
Death looked at the eaters. Most of them were younger than Miss Flitworth.
There was a giggle from somewhere in the scented darkness beyond the firelight.
“And the young people” Miss Flitworth added, evenly. “We used to have a saying about this time of year. Let’s see…something like ‘Corn be ripe, nuts be brown, petticoats up…’ something.” She sighed. “Don’t time fly, eh?”
YES.
“You know, Bill Door, maybe you were right about the power of positive thinking. I feel a lot better tonight.”
YES?
Miss Flitworth looked speculatively at the dance floor. “I used to be a great dancer when I was a gel. I could dance anyone off their feet. I could dance down the moon. I could dance the sun up.”
She reached up and removed the bands that held her hair in its tight bun, and shook it out in a waterfall of white.
“I take it you do dance, Mr. Bill Door?”
FAMED FOR IT, MISS FLITWORTH.
Under the band’s awning, the lead fiddler nodded to his fellow musicians, stuck his fiddle under his chin, and pounded on the boards with his foot—