Cuckoo (30 page)
She grabbed her hair, twisted it up and clasped it at the back with a large claw of a hairgrip. She splashed her face with water and put on a smear of lipstick – the first she had worn for months. She stopped for a moment and looked closely at her face in the bathroom mirror. In the brutal blue light that burned from the bulbs over the top of it, she looked shadowed, tired. She rummaged in her side of the bathroom cabinet for the Touche Éclat that was her one bit of cosmetic extravagance, but, to her annoyance, it seemed to have disappeared.
But there were more important things to take care of, so, slipping her feet into her black suede flats, she went downstairs to find Janka and show her around.
She was a little taken aback to find their babysitter at the kitchen table, having a glass of wine with Gareth. Surely it wasn’t wise for her to drink before taking charge of four children? The thought of cancelling and sending Janka back flashed through her mind. Surely that would be the most sensible thing? Just one drink can impair the judgement, after all.
But of course, that was for driving, not childcare, and Rose had to admit that she often looked after four or more children after considerably more than just one glass of wine.
‘Hello, Rose.’ Janka, a handsome Slovakian girl, unfolded herself to her full height and shook hands with Rose.
‘Hi, Janka. I’ll just show you round. You haven’t been here before, have you?’
‘Oh yes, Rose. I have being here fivesix times, when you and baby are away,’ Janka smiled and nodded.
Rose looked over at Gareth, her eyebrows arching.
‘Someone had to look after the kids when I was visiting,’ Gareth said.
Rose didn’t even bother to wonder why Polly couldn’t have done it.
‘Well, then, I’ll just show you what to do if Flossie wakes up. You’ve got the pub number, and Gareth has told you to phone it if she shows any sign of being in trouble, and you must check on her every hour, OK?’
Rose really did intend just to show Janka the Flossie part of the operation, but she found herself instead taking Janka round everywhere and introducing her to the children, who looked up and said, ‘Hi, Janka,’ then carried on watching
Futurama
.
Futurama
.
Janka followed Rose around, nodding uh-huh, uh-huh to all Rose’s precise and detailed instructions. She did it in such a way that Rose wondered if she were taking anything in at all. Again, Rose felt like calling the evening off, but she couldn’t begin to think of a way of extracting herself now without appearing incredibly rude.
She and Gareth kissed the children – all the children, because Rose had persuaded Gareth that they must treat the boys as if they were their own in that respect – and set off along the lane to the pub.
It was a cold, cloudless night, with the type of chill that froze into your sinuses and evaporated in your breath. The air made Rose’s eyes water slightly, bringing the moonlit hedgerow into sharp focus. Clarity, she thought, is what’s needed tonight. Just keep things clear.
They wandered down the lane, and Rose tucked her arm into Gareth’s. He talked about the night sky, about how it made outlines of the trees against the rim of the horizon. She was happy to listen to him.
They stopped and held their breath to hear the nothingness of the country night around them, until it was broken by the screech of an owl and the scream of something tiny. They moved on. As they neared the pub, which was on the outskirts of the village proper, streetlight took over from the moon and stars, and the clamour from within swallowed the silence of the night outside.
It was a full house inside, for sure. For someone with only a telephone and the postal service at her disposal – she claimed not to know even how to turn a computer on – Polly had managed to pull in an audience of two hundred or more, enough certainly to cram the Lamb. Rose looked around as Gareth went to the bar. With a few exceptions, this wasn’t a local crowd. The Lamb couldn’t have seen so many piercings and leather under one roof in all its five hundred years. There were quite a few raddled, excited thirtysomethings in black, necking what looked like Snakebite. These were obviously fans from the old days. But there were also some bettergroomed, more blasé types, drinking white wine and trying to get a reception on their iPhones, which, of course, as Rose knew, was impossible. These must be the industry people, the ones that could shape a future for Polly. An independent future. Rose was very glad to see there were quite so many of these people.
If it took off for Polly and she went back to gigging and recording all over the world, perhaps, Rose thought, she could look after the boys for her on a more formal basis.
Gareth brought her drink over and handed it to her.
‘There’s Jon,’ he waved across the bar. ‘Do you mind if I go and see him? He’s been on at me about joining the cricket team.’
‘How very Archers,’ Rose said.
‘My final assimilation into English culture.’ Gareth put his hand on his heart.
‘You go, then, you old Limey. I’m going to find a good spot for filming.’
She perched on a bar stool by the fireplace, quite near the front, where she could see over the heads of the standing crowd, and peered at the video camera, checking that it was on the right setting. She was always the one in charge of the camera. To look at their family photographs, one might think that she didn’t exist, because she was always the wrong side of the lens. Gareth took a lot of photographs for his work and said he tended to view any other camera use as a bit of a busman’s holiday, so it was left up to her. She didn’t mind though. She thought she was rather good at photography, that she had an eye for composition.
The phone rang at the bar. Rose felt a sharp prick of fear as she swung round to see Charlie the landlord pick it up. He laughed down the receiver, a nicotine-stained croak, greeting an old crony. Rose’s panic subsided into its usual remnants of a shuddering heartbeat. To calm herself, she looked around and tried to tune into the crowd. There was a definite trend for people to stand facing the stage. Every time there was a movement up front, there was a pause in the conversational buzz. They were waiting.
‘I’ve said I’ll go down to the nets next Wednesday. Anything to get him off my back.’ Gareth had crossed the bar and was standing at her side. ‘I’m just off for a smoke,’ he said, and disappeared again.
Rose drained her drink and, leaving her jacket on the stool, went up to the bar to get another. She wished Simon was there, but his absence was understandable. She tried to catch Charlie’s eye as he served the throng at the bar, but he wasn’t bestowing any favours tonight, and she had to wait what seemed an age to be served. So long was it, in fact, that she decided to buy a whole bottle of wine and tuck it over on the mantelpiece by her stool, to save having to go back.
She had just got herself settled when there was another, more definitive hush in the crowd. She looked up and saw Polly flit across the small raised area that did for a stage, guitar slung across her front. She stopped in front of a microphone and pulled it down closer to her mouth. Her lips were painted blood red, and she wore a long black dress that looked like a spider’s web. She appeared a little nervous.
‘Hello.’ She looked at the audience without a smile. ‘It’s good to be back.’
With that, the audience erupted into a passionate cheer, which brought a flicker of pleasure to Polly’s face. Rose set the video camera going. Polly bent down to her guitar and strummed a few minor chords.
‘I’m a widow and this is my story,’ she said through half-closed eyes. Then she launched into her first number.
Polly was on great form. Her voice soared from a low growl to a banshee wail in no more than a beat. Her new songs touched on pain, love, blood and death. All her anger and disappointment were unleashed there, in that tiny room. It was obvious, from the quality of their attention that, for many in the audience, the night was a transcendent, even transforming experience.
Rose once looked over to Gareth, who had come in from his cigarette at the first sound of Polly’s voice. The crowd had been too thick for him to make his way over to Rose, so he had positioned himself at the other side of the room, leaning against the bar in a slightly proprietorial way. Looking at him watching Polly, Rose felt uncomfortable. There was something in his face that she didn’t want to see; something that made her feel very ordinary, as if she wasn’t really worthy to stand in this room, listening to this music. She suddenly felt disappointed in herself, ashamed that she hadn’t managed to turn out as magnificent as her friend up there on the stage. The advantages that she had thought she had gained over the last ten or so years were obviously just some sort of mythology; she was back where she deserved to be, playing the triangle in Orchestra Polly.
Polly squatted and swung her guitar around as if it were her slave, bound to her hip. The crotch of her knickers was all on display, but in an earthily erotic way that went beyond any sort of sleaze. Rose was, for a moment, in awe.
She remembered very clearly one hot summer’s day when she, Polly and a couple of other girls were supposed to be doing shot putt, but instead were just lazing in the sun at the top of the games field. Rose and the others were sitting with their legs curled by their sides, tucking their short games skirts around themselves. Polly, however, sat splayed out, her skirt hitched up and everything fully on display. But there was not a spare pube protruding, nor a wet or grey patch to be seen on her pristine white knickers. Oh, to have that confidence even about that most difficult and wayward part of your body, Rose had thought then. And there it was again: Polly, still as unbridled, so easily on display. Like her thirteen-year-old self.
Rose, stuck there with the video camera, felt like a big lump.
The steady Eddie. That’s what Rose had become. The one who had done the sensible things. Her most outré, risky gesture of late had been to buy an old house and spend two years working hard to do it up. Not all that extraordinary, comparatively. Faced with the electricity on stage and the way it was holding this cool, aloof audience, she felt like the bourgeois, middle-aged housewife she had probably become – and by far and away the least exciting prospect in the room.
The twelve new songs that Polly played that night, together with the famous title track of
Running Scared
, her 1992 album, and a couple of other oldies, put the audience in the palm of her hand. Acoustic pieces, with only her own guitar-playing to accompany them, they nevertheless filled the small space in a way that seemed to transform even the smell of it.
Running Scared
, her 1992 album, and a couple of other oldies, put the audience in the palm of her hand. Acoustic pieces, with only her own guitar-playing to accompany them, they nevertheless filled the small space in a way that seemed to transform even the smell of it.
At the end, the audience erupted. They stamped the ground, whooped, yelled for more. People holding glasses tapped their heavy silver rings on them. Polly stood on the stage and, smiling, she put her hands together in a
namaste
then propped her guitar up against the wall and turned and walked through the audience towards the bar. People tried to touch her.
namaste
then propped her guitar up against the wall and turned and walked through the audience towards the bar. People tried to touch her.
Rose, still filming, attempted to follow her path through the audience, but for the main, tiny Polly, who from the stage had filled the corners of the room with her energy, was swamped now she was down on the floor.
Rose was just putting the camera away when she heard a gasp in the crowd and looked up. A space had cleared around Polly, who was being confronted by a tall blonde woman in skin-tight jeans and an expensively soft-looking leather biker jacket. The woman was blocking Polly’s path, standing over her like an evil Disney witch. Rose craned her head to hear what was going on.
‘You know,’ the blonde woman was saying, ‘the fact that your husband has died is the only interesting thing about you.’
Polly was looking up at her with one hand on her hip, staring her out. The woman swooped forward and slapped her full on the face, catching her by surprise and cutting her cheekbone with a large diamond ring.
Polly went down, and five men, Gareth amongst them, leaped to her aid.
Another man, tall and dark, with a black fringe falling across his tired blue eyes, took hold of the blonde woman who was, it was now obvious, very drunk indeed.
‘You said you’d behave if we came here,’ he hissed.
‘During the gig, I said. DURING THE GIG!’ she snarled back.
Rose was quite put out that she had zipped the camera back in its padded bag.
‘How many times have I told you? It’s all in the past!’ the man was yelling.
‘I saw your face,’ she came back at him. ‘Don’t tell me you don’t still want it, that filthy little piece of stinking fish.’
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