Frozen Music (3 page)

‘What?' Madox, my father, looked up from the pages of the
Guardian
.

‘That boy, Linus. It seems he pigged out on pop and crisps, ending up writhing in agony on the floor in the middle of the opening party. He's prone to stomach upsets, Olivia says. Anyway,' my mother scanned the letter before continuing, ‘“his father carted him off to casualty, but not before the wretched boy had thrown up all over the main exhibit,”' she quoted. ‘“A
Madonna and Child Running in Terror under Attack from US War Planes
.”'Audrey shook her head and reached for a cigarette from the black onyx box on the coffee table. My father leant across and lit it, and one for himself too. I wished I smoked. Not smoking was yet another thing to make me feel apart. I was short too, though I knew that was normal for a ten-year-old, and I had to go to bed really early although I was never sleepy, while Audrey, who stayed up on the sofa half the night, kept dozing off in front of the television. Now I watched my parents draw on their cigarettes in unison, identical little smiles of satisfaction on their faces, thin tendrils of smoke spilling out from their lips. As it was Saturday, I had a bag of sweets.

‘What was a sculpture of a Madonna and Child etc. doing at a craft gallery?' Madox asked my mother. Audrey shrugged. She looked again at the letter. ‘Maybe it was wood.' She put it aside. ‘The boy is thirteen. You would have thought he'd have grown out of that kind of behaviour.'

I had finished my sweets. ‘Maybe,' I said, making my mother turn to me with a slightly startled look as if she had momentarily forgotten who I was. ‘Maybe they should be grateful to him. Maybe the sick looked just like napalm.'

‘I told you we shouldn't let that child watch the evening news,' Audrey said to Madox, making me look around the room to see who
that
child was. Then I got up from the upholstered stool where I had been sitting. I looked pointedly at my watch. It was quite new, a present for my tenth birthday, with a small round face and a red real leather strap. It kept excellent time. My parents seemed to regret having given it to me. ‘It's eleven o'clock,' I announced from the doorway.

‘Thank you, Esther,' my father said, not even looking up from his paper. He had switched from the
Guardian
, now folded on his lap, to
The Times
. Madox had to read all the papers because he wrote for one himself. He was a political commentator and he went on the radio, too, and twice already he had appeared on television. Audrey had put Olivia's letter away and now she was studying the flowers she had arranged in an Alvar Alto vase. She frowned at them and I knew how they felt: untidy, in the wrong place, then she put out her hand and tweaked a twig of mimosa. She did that to me, too, tweaked bits of me, my hair, the collar on my shirt, whatever offended her view.

‘We were meant to leave at a quarter to,' I complained. ‘It's now' – I looked at my watch – ‘three and a half minutes past.'

‘I said be ready to leave at a quarter to, not that we are necessarily leaving then,' Madox said.

I looked at him, appalled. Parents were congenitally unfair, every child knew that, but this was going too far. I had to speak up. ‘You know that when you say “be ready to leave at a quarter to, Esther” that means that's when we're meant to go and that if I wasn't ready and you were, then I would get into trouble.'

‘Oh, do stop going on and on, child,' Audrey snapped. Madox carried on reading.

‘It's not fair,' I said. ‘If it had been…' Madox put down the paper with a little splat, on top of the other one. ‘One more word from you,
Esther, and the only place you'll be going is your room.' He reached for another cigarette. I felt torn; on the one hand I wanted him to put it out, the cigarette, so that we could leave, on the other hand I knew that Smoking Kills and, right then, I hated him.

‘Oh, Esther.' My mother turned to me, a blue iris in her hand. ‘What does it matter
when
you leave as long as you do?'

I spun round and dashed out on to the landing, throwing myself down on the green ottoman by the window. What does it matter? my mother asks. It's as I suspected for a long time; she doesn't understand. Madox had said be ready to leave at quarter to eleven and we both knew that meant that was when he intended for us to leave. Then he goes and changes the rules just because it suits him and, worst of all, he doesn't even admit to doing it. I hated it when people did that. It made me feel that simply no one could be relied on. Janet had said once that it was just as well I felt like that. ‘In this world you'll have to learn to rely on yourself,' she had said. That was all very well, I thought now, wiping an annoying tear from my right eye, then from my left, but I was a child, I didn't have a car, let alone a chequebook, how would I live? From the drawing-room I heard Audrey's voice. ‘It's like living with a sergeant-major,' she said.

‘Look on the bright side,' Madox replied. ‘At least she doesn't puke all over our
objets d'art
.'

‘Dear God, make him smoke a whole packet of cigarettes,' I mumbled. I felt instantly guilty. ‘Actually, just one, dear God,' I whispered hastily.

At half past Madox finally appeared on the landing. ‘Oh, there you are, Esther,' he said. ‘Ready to go? Got your money?'

Silently I held up my purse, which was red like the watchstrap, but made from imitation leather not real. Inside were five pound notes, payment for my appearance as a tooth fairy in a television toothpaste commercial. It had been a disaster. I had been spotted at Peter Jones by a friend of Audrey's. The woman, a complete stranger to me, had rushed out from behind a display of sewing machines, bent down and clasped my face in her hands. ‘How darling!' she had exclaimed. ‘How absolutely darling.' Then she knelt down on the shop carpet and
peered at me. At this stage I expected my mother to intervene; after all, I was not supposed to talk to strangers and this woman was stranger than most, but not a bit of it.

‘Darling,' Audrey shrieked as the stranger got to her feet. Then they kissed.

‘She's perfect,' the woman said. ‘Is she yours?' Sometimes, when asked this, my mother seemed reluctant to answer, but this time she said ‘Yes' rather quickly.

‘Well, I want her,' the stranger proclaimed.

I began to get worried. I know I complain about my mother, but she was my mother and I was used to her. I think I loved her. All right, there had been that time the other day when I had knelt by my bed and prayed to God that he would strike her dead, but I didn't really mean it.

I tugged at her arm. ‘I think we should leave now,' I hissed. ‘Just tell her she can't have me and let's go.'

Audrey shrugged me off. ‘Esther, I don't know what your problem is, but this is Mrs Debray. I want you to say hello nicely.' I glared and muttered ‘Hello'.

‘Mrs Debray and I are very old friends,' Audrey went on. ‘Mrs Debray is in films.' They decided to go upstairs and have coffee. Mrs Debray ordered a Coke for me.

‘I want you to be in a little film of mine, Esther, a commercial, now isn't that something?' She had crouched down again, so that her eyes were level with mine across the table. I looked back at her, wishing that I could suddenly telescope, like Alice, right up and away from her sight. Instead I said, ‘Whenever anyone says “Isn't that something” my daddy always says “Well, isn't everything”.'

‘Don't be cheeky, Esther.' Audrey frowned at me.

‘I wasn't being cheeky,' I began. ‘Daddy always says that when people…'

‘That's enough, Esther.' Audrey's voice held a warning of unpleasantness to come. But Mrs Debray just smiled and said again how perfect I was. My mother and I both looked doubtful. In the end, I was offered the part of the Bad Tooth Fairy. I rather liked the idea,
looking forward to playing the role. I spent hours hissing and grimacing in the mirror, the way a bad fairy would hiss and grimace. I even coloured my front teeth black with liquorice. The day of filming began and disaster struck. Just minutes before I was due to appear, and was trapped in a dressing-room in just my vest and knickers, the director decided that I was just right for the part of the Good Tooth Fairy. ‘All those dark curls and those bright blue eyes. Great complexion. Good teeth too' (my mother had made me clean off the black liquorice).

No one listened to my protests. I tried to tell them that good fairies are supposed to have golden hair and that bad fairies had dark, just like mine, but it was no good, they just wouldn't listen. Instead they milled round me, tugging at my hair, tying ribbons in it, pulling petticoats over my head, and before I knew it I was squeezed into a white tulle frock covered in pink rosebuds. I could feel my face go the same colour, from sheer humiliation, but that only seemed to please them even more. ‘What wonderful colouring. Just like Snow White.'

Snow White! A well-known drip. The worst of it was that while all this was happening to me my mother just stood there looking pleased. Who, I asked myself, could you rely on in this world?

But I did earn some money, five pounds which were given directly to me to spend on whatever I liked and I planned to spend it in Hamleys, as soon as my father got us there.

It was Saturday and the shop was crowded, all five floors of it. Madox got tetchy before we had even reached the second. I had watched a man building a Lego castle, then I had moved on to the soft toys. It wasn't often I had that kind of money to spend and I wanted to make the most of it. There was a cuddly giraffe that I liked very much, but it turned out to be too expensive. I didn't mind. It was better not to find what I wanted straight away, that way it wouldn't all be over too soon. Next I moved to the dolls. I paused at the Barbies. I hated Ken. As far as I was concerned he was plain ugly; that short, bristly hair. I preferred his friend, Alan. Maybe I would get an Alan? Behind me, Madox cleared his throat; an impatient sound. Now if
he
had been forced to be a goody-goody fairy on television,
I
would have said he
deserved to spend a really long time to choose something nice for his money. But I had noticed before that adults were seldom as fair as children. What happened on the way? Everyone assumed that children grew into adults, but the more I saw, the more I doubted it. Maybe there was an exchange? Maybe, on the eve of their sixteenth birthday children were snatched from their beds and exchanged for adults? That led me to think that there had to be a very nice place somewhere, where all those children were kept.

I ignored Madox and moved on to a display of tiny baby dolls. They each came in their own little pouch and you could buy all kinds of things to go with them: cots and prams and masses of clothes. I picked out one with dark hair like me. She could be my little sister. She cost one pound, ninety-nine pence. I could get a set of clothes or a cot for the rest of my money. I hesitated; it was a big decision and I wasn't sure. Then I saw them, a set of handbells, plump and pastel-coloured: pink, apricot, yellow and blue, lavender and turquoise.
Produces a full and professional sound
, the packaging declared.
Full instructions and a book of easy-to-learn melodies included
. I closed my eyes and imagined myself the owner of the bells. I could practise when I was alone in the house or late at night when everyone slept, standing in my bedroom, ringing my bells. If my parents woke up they would think they were in heaven.

‘Come on, Esther.' Madox sounded bored. ‘What will it be?'

I took a deep breath and opened my eyes. ‘I like those,' I said, pointing at the bells.

Madox picked the cardboard and cellophane box down off the shelf, frowning at them. What was wrong? Were they too expensive? I hadn't seen the price. I looked up at his face, waiting for his frown to clear.

‘Aren't you a bit old for that kind of thing? You've got a proper instrument at home. Still.' He handed me the box. ‘It's your money. Don't let me interfere.'

I didn't look at the handbells as I returned them to the shelf. ‘I was just thinking,' I said quickly, feeling myself turn pink. ‘That's really what I want.' I grabbed a box of plastic shapes. ‘You make patterns,' I explained.

‘I told you,' Madox said, already on his way over to the till. ‘It's your money.'

Back home, Audrey glanced at the box with its illustration on the lid of two children, a boy and a girl, both dressed in bright sleeveless pullovers and engrossed in the task of drawing geometric patterns with the help of the plastic shapes. ‘Stencils, very nice, darling.' She turned to Madox. ‘Now what shall we do about dinner? In or out? Out, I think. I can't bear the thought of cooking. Why Janet has to insist on visiting her mother every weekend I'll never know. The old dear can't remember a thing anyway. “Janet,” I said. “Go once a month and just say see you next week as usual. She'll never know the difference.”'

I wandered upstairs and put the box of stencils away, unopened, in the cupboard of my dresser. Then I lay down on my bed, clutching Pigotty, the vast red cloth pig my grandmother Billings had given me at Christmas, to my chest. ‘He's a prince among pigs,' my grandmother had said and she was right. Pigotty had teats for a start, little brass buttons running down his striped grey-and-white belly – Audrey had said that that should have told me that
he
was a
she
, but I said that it just made him an even more exceptional
he
. And he was such a sensible pig. He never worried about his weight, for a start, and he had the most even temper of anyone I had ever met. Right now he agreed with me that the pastel-coloured handbells would have been wonderful. ‘But it's not a catastrophe,' he went on in his calm voice. ‘When you're grown up and are a psychiatrist you can buy as many handbells as you like and play them all night if you wish.' Then, because he was such a sensible and intelligent pig, he added, ‘Although I suspect that by that time you might prefer something like an electric guitar. Now would you care for a drink? Coke or lemonade?'