Second Fiddle (15 page)

“You're not sitting in here in this heat, are you?” I said to Tim.

“No,” he answered. “I've been out on the porch, having my tea. Gillian's in here.”

I peered through the dusky air and made out Gillian, twiddling with her violin.

“I thought you couldn't play in here,” I said, even though I wasn't supposed to be speaking to Gillian after the way she had stood me up. I was dying to know what had happened, of course—how come she'd suddenly lost interest in finding her dad and where she'd gotten the money to go to the audition after all.

“I'm not,” Gillian said, as if nothing had happened between us, as if she had never let me down, as if she had nothing to apologize for. “I'm just tuning up.”

She emerged from the shadows and walked past me, out onto the sunlit porch. She didn't say any more. She didn't explain. Maybe she was waiting for me to ask. I was bursting to, but I didn't want to give in. I felt she owed me an explanation. I shouldn't have to ask. She twiddled a bit more, made some dreadful scraping noises, and then she started to play, nothing interesting, just scales. She kept stopping to tune the instrument and complain that the heat was ruining the tone.

After about a dozen scales, I clapped my hands to my ears and made a face at Tim, who was leaning against the balcony.

“I can't stand it!” I mouthed to Tim.

“I know,” he said loudly. “Drives me mad too. And my mother. That's why Gill has to practice out of doors. Wah-wah-wah.…” He sang the last bit in a squeaky violin-like voice, in time with Gillian's playing.
Doh-re-mi.

“The first three notes just happen to be…,” I sang loudly, to drown out the violin.

“Wah-wah-wah!” Tim joined in, and we both laughed.

Gillian tossed her head, turned her back on us, and continued playing.

“Let's go!” I mouthed again.

Tim grinned and took my hand. Together we tiptoed down the “fairy” steps and ran away into the woods, the
wah-wah-wah
of the scales chasing us as we ran.

We stopped when we could no longer hear the tortured notes.

“I think it's safe here,” Tim said, and he sat down on a fallen tree trunk. “There's no wind, so the sound doesn't carry very far. Poor Gillian. She's a nervous wreck, you know, over this audition, and my mother is making her life a misery.”

I plonked myself down next to Tim. I felt very tiny beside him. “So she is going?” I asked. “What happened? How come it's suddenly all right? I'm confused here.”

“It's not really all right,” Tim said, “it's just that when Zelda found out that Gillian had her heart set on going, and was even planning to go so far as to track Dad down and nobble him for the money, she shelled out herself instead.”

“That's funny,” I said, trying to plait some fern fronds. I soon gave that up. They were too brittle. “It would have made more sense, you'd think, to let him pay for it, to insist, even, that he paid for it.”

“I don't properly understand it either,” Tim said, “except that Zelda and Dad have a sort of competition going on between them. They both want to be the best parent. So she probably figures that if she gives Gill the money, then she has one up on Dad. Something like that. People who used to be married have a very odd way of going on. That's the only way I can explain it. And the bonus for Zelda is that if Gillian passes the audition and gets offered a place, then Dad'll have to pay the fees. Maybe she thinks it might be fun to land him with that bill.”

“So you mean your mother is taking a kind of gamble—she's paying for Gillian to go to the audition in the hope that she gets a place and then your father has to pay up? That's—”

“Horrible,” Tim said. “I know. But that's the way it is. Everything comes down to money in our family. Every single thing. And it's not fair. Gillian's really a cracker on that fiddle. Her talent shouldn't be a football between our parents, but there you are, that's the way it goes. Never get divorced, Mags.”

“I'm not married,” I said.

Tim laughed. “I know that, Mags,” he said. “I meant.…”

“I know what you meant,” I said. “I'll keep that advice in mind. Thank you. I believe it costs a fortune, that school.”

“Not really,” Tim said. “It's more than Dad would want to pay, but it's not all that terribly expensive. I mean, you have to take airfares into account as well, it's not as cheap as going to the local comprehensive, you do have to budget for it, but—”

“I thought it costs thousands.”

“Yes, but very few thousands for most people. Hardly anyone pays the full fees, unless they're rich. It's subsidized like mad. A family like us would only have to pay a small fraction of the real cost.”

“He lied to me, then,” I said, half to myself. “About the money. I wonder why he bothered.”

“To
you?
You've met my dad? How come?”

“Oh, it's a long story,” I said. “Tell me something. Is it true that your mother is an opera singer?”

Tim laughed again. “She wishes! She had her voice trained, she's done a few amateur productions, but you couldn't call her an opera singer, unless you were being very kind. She's a dilettante. That's Dad's word, not mine.”

“Oh, I see. I thought … When are you off to England?”

“Day after tomorrow,” said Tim, “with Pigair.”

“What?”

“You know, pigs might fly, and so might we if we felt like it, but actually we prefer staying on the ground and insulting our passengers, that's more fun.”

I laughed. I'd heard of them. Then I stood up and brushed myself off. I knew I should say something about wishing Gillian well at the audition, but I couldn't bring myself to do it. I was too annoyed with her.

“Well look,” I said, “I hope everything … you know, bon voyage and all that.” It wasn't much, but it was the best I could manage.

“I'll walk you home,” Tim said, by way of answer.

“No,” I said. “I'd rather go on my own. Give me a head start, OK?”

Tim looked disappointed, but he nodded. “OK,” he said, and he gave an absurd little wave. I waved back, wiggling my fingers. Then I turned on my heel and started to run, leaving him sitting there, idly chewing the sweet end of a long stalk of grass.

I was wearing runners, and I made quick progress over the uneven ground. As I neared the foresters' hut again, I could hear Gillian's endless, boring scales searing the air. There is something terribly depressing about listening to scales. It's probably worse if you have to play them.

I stood for a moment to get my breath, and I imagined Gillian sawing away endlessly, desperate to get everything right, to make every sound perfect. It made me feel sad inside. Nothing is ever perfect. There is no such thing as perfection. How awful to devote your life to trying to achieve the unattainable! Quite suddenly the scales stopped, though, and something new seemed to float dreamily on the warm, still air. It was so delicate a sound to start with, I thought for a moment I was imagining it, but just as I reached that conclusion, the music lifted and drifted to me through the shadowy sunlight. The sound lifted again and now I could hear it quite clearly, pouring through the woods like the sunshine—soft, warm, intense, just this side of unbearable, and then, when I thought it was really going to get unbearable, something somewhere seemed to flip over an edge, and there it came again, the blackbird, swooping toward me, endlessly, delightedly swooping. It alighted for a moment on a twig, swayed briefly, and then slipped off again into the slanty air and disappeared over the treetops, and I knew what I had to do. It wasn't much, it probably wouldn't have any effect, but I still had to do it.

I closed my eyes and crossed all the fingers I could manage and I wished and wished. I wished so hard I began to see little multicolored lights dancing inside my eyelids. I'd had a lot of practice at wishing, but my wishes had never come true. I'd wished on falling stars and on blown-out birthday candles, on shiny copper pennies and at wishing wells, but nothing worked. Maybe that's because I'd been wishing for myself, I thought now. Maybe to come true a wish has to be completely selfless. Maybe you don't need a falling star, just an open heart. And so what I wished for this time was that Gillian would pass her audition and get her place in that school she seemed to care so much about. I felt so sorry for her, caught in the crossfire of her parents' constant battling, and working so hard to get this thing she wanted so desperately. She deserved it, not for being a delightful person, but for being so good at what she does best, and for working so hard at it.

When I opened my eyes again and waited for the afterimages of the dancing lights to dissolve, I saw that a blackbird sat on a branch, just at eye level, watching me. I almost gasped. It was a real blackbird, like the one I'd seen the other day, pulling the worm out of the earth. The bird stared and I stared back. Then it dipped its sleek black head, flapped its coal black wings, and rose from its branch, climbing the shimmering air. I craned my neck to watch as it swirled away into the green and leafy wood.

*   *   *

My mother grinned when she saw my head coming around the back door.

“We have a visitor, dear,” she said in a strange, high, excited voice.

She never called me
dear.

I kicked off my runners at the door and came into the kitchen, carrying them by the laces. A scruffy man with a red baseball cap jammed down on his head sat at the table, opposite my mother. They were drinking tea.

I opened my mouth to speak to my mother, but no sound came.

My mother said, “Mags, this is Mr. Lafferty. He is an old friend of mine and your father's, since our college days. He's not my boyfriend, so don't start on that again, and remember, do not mention prams outside supermarkets.”

Horrified, I stared at “Loony” Len. He took off his baseball cap and said, “Recognize me now, do you?”

I nodded, my eyes still wide, my heart thumping.

“She's a good girl,” my mother was saying to Len. “A fine daughter. I tell her so myself, but she finds it hard to accept. She hasn't got over Ben's death, you know. It's tough at her age, of course.…”

I couldn't believe my mother was having this conversation
about me
with this stranger. But that wasn't the main thing. What was the main thing? Oh yes, I had to warn her, somehow I had to warn Mum that this man was possibly dangerous.

“Mum!” I wailed, or tried to, but again no words came, nothing but a squawking sound, like Gillian tuning up her violin. My throat felt hot and thick, like the inside of the little wooden hut in the woods. I understood now what Gillian meant when she said she couldn't play in there, the music got all muffled. That's just what was happening to my voice.

I stared at “Loony” Len, and as I stared, little lights began to dance before my eyes, and he started to morph, very slowly, into Gillian's father.

“You're not in
Girls' Own
territory now, you know,” he said, and leaned back in his swivel chair, smirking at my mother.

My mother went on grinning dementedly.

I tried to scream again. Still no sound came, but the effort threw my whole body into spasm and I woke with a start. As soon as I woke, the scream came, loud and long.

My mother came rushing into the room, snapping on the light switch. The light hurt my eyes and I pulled a pillow to my face to block it out. My mother called, “Mags! Don't! You'll suffocate!”

Slowly, blinking, I lowered the pillow. Carefully, I looked around the room.

“It was a dream,” I said, putting my hand flat against my chest, feeling my heart like a wild bird inside me. “It must have been a dream. Oh,
Mum!
I thought he was going to get you,
kill
you!”

I flung myself back on my other pillow and wailed. Tears pumped out of me and streamed down the sides of my face, soaking the pillowcase on both sides of my head. My stomach retched with sobbing. “Oh, Mum!” I wailed again, between sobs.

“It's all right,” said my mother softly. “It's all right. Sit up a minute.”

I sat up, still sobbing. My mother dabbed at my tear-dampened face with the corner of the duvet cover. Then she whisked the duvet off and turned it around in a flash, so the dry part was to the top. She turned the damp pillow over, put the second pillow on top, smoothed the pillowcase with both hands, and gently tipped me back onto the pillows.

“Now, stop crying,” she said, “or the second pillow will get wet too, and we'll have to change the bed linen. I don't want to have to do that at three o'clock in the morning.”

I managed a small grin and wiped the last of my tears with my fingertips.

“Now, I'm going to turn off the overhead light, but I'm going to put this lamp on for a bit, and I'm going to put the radio on too, for company, and then I am going to bring you up a nice cup of hot chocolate. And when you've had it, you can turn the radio and the light off and snuggle back down to sleep, but I'll leave the landing light on and the door open, and I'll leave my door open too, so it'll be almost as if I'm in the same room.”

I grinned broadly this time. This exact speech was a ritual from my childhood.

“Thanks, Mum,” I said, “but I think I can manage without the chocolate. It's too hot.”

“All right, then, I'll bring you a glass of water. OK?”

“OK,” I said. “Mum?” I was going to make an admission I'd never make in daylight hours. The dark seemed to rub the corners off familiar things and make them seem different. “I miss Teddy Murphy,” I said. “I wonder what happened to him.”

My mother sniggered. “You big baby, you.”

I bit my lip.

My mother left the room and came back in a moment with a glass of water—and Teddy Murphy.