The Devil's Music (12 page)

    She snatches Grampy’s book on knots, ties and splices up from the floor. ‘I’m taking this away until you’re more sensible, Andrew.’ She shuts the bedroom door and is gone.

    I shuffle on my bottom until I am wedged in the corner between Susie’s bedroom door and the side of her white painted wardrobe. If anyone comes I will be hidden. I sit with my chin on my knees. Downstairs, the television goes on. I hear Mummy call out from the kitchen for Susie. Then she’s talking. The painter must be having tea in the kitchen again. I put my ear down to the floorboards to listen and that’s when I see Mummy’s lost thistle brooch on the floor under Susie’s chest of drawers, right back by the skirting board.

    Yesterday, when Mummy put her coat on to go to the shops she saw her favourite brooch was missing and she put her hands over her face and sat on the bottom step and cried real tears.

    I reach under the chest of drawers and put my fingers around the brooch. It’s hard and scratchy in my hand. On Susie’s chest of drawers is a photo with Mummy smiling. Auntie Jean took it ages ago, before she had the Ilford. The photo is just me and Mummy sitting on the hospital blanket next to a breakwater. Susie and Elaine are not born yet. In the picture, Mummy is doing Cheers! with the mug from the top of her thermos.

    Yesterday, after Mummy saw her brooch was gone, she went out into the garden for a breath of fresh air. It was raining but she went out all the same and stood by the rhododendron bushes to see the buds coming. When she came back in, the rain was in her hair like drops in a spider’s web. I put my hands in her hair. It was soft and wet.

The daylight has almost gone by the time I wake up. I’m on the sofa. My neck’s stiff and my throat dry.

    At first I curse Susie for taking the last of the water, but then see the empty plastic bottles scattered around with the boys’ buckets on the grass. I try the taps again and check the mains, but finally resign myself to dying of thirst or traipsing next door for water.

    Lights are on, but there’s no answer when I ring the bell, nor when I rap on the door. Some flinty stones, sharp-edged, are piled to one side of the step and an assortment of cockle and razor shells fills an aluminium bucket. Someone has hung pebbles on lengths of string in the porch. I start to count but give up when I get to thirty.

    Turning away, I catch sight of a sea-bleached branch stuck, upright, into the earth and hung with an assortment of flip flops and jelly shoes. Some adult, some child-sized. All lost. The once bright plastic and rubber has been faded by sun and salt. A sign, white paint on a piece of scaffolding plank, says: ‘The Jelly Tree’. The hairs on my forearms rise and I glance back at the windows of the house. Instead of being set at right angles to each other as at The Siding, the two railway carriages are parallel and joined with a wooden structure that creates a large living area. From here, I can see right through the house and out the other side. The window on the far side, the seaward side, gives a glimpse of dark sea and sky. And there’s a shape. Not moving. It looks like the outline of a leg; a pointed foot. I’ll get a better look from the beach side.

    When I get there, a woman is crouching on the decking. She’s wearing dirty white overalls and is holding a hose. Even in the half light I can see she’s in a trance, gazing at water coming out of the hose and whatever the water is falling on to. She has a long plait over one shoulder that swings as she stoops. The end of the plait is darker, perhaps wet. Her forearms are splattered with what looks like mud. She’s oblivious to my presence. She stands upright – she’s tall – and heads off round to the other side of the house, striding with ease over the pebbles even though her feet are bare.

    I hurry up to the decking to see what was holding her attention and find a head. A clay head. The hose is still running. I pick it up and hold it over the head. Water courses over the swerves of hair, slowing into twisting ribbons and smaller rivulets that spread before they spill on to the wooden decking. I’m kneeling down to get a closer look when the water stops.

    Scarlet toenails appear on the wet boards. I straighten up. Her eyes are snapping dark, almost black. She opens her mouth to speak, and it’s not difficult to see from the lift of her chin and the shock-ready turn of her back, that her fury is barely suppressed. I want to touch her. I want to prevent whatever it is she’s about to say. I reach for one of her hands. But she’s startled, I’ve gauged it wrong. She twists back. The swell of her muscle under my palm tells me I’m gripping her upper arm. I drop my hands hurriedly.

    ‘This,’ but my voice cracks, ‘is really good.’ I can’t read her expression. There’s a smudge of clay on her forehead. She’s a lot older than I thought at first and she’s shaking.

    I squat down on all fours again, admiring the head. ‘You must be pleased.’ I try smiling up at her, but she doesn’t look at all pleased. She’s breathing hard, muscular arms folded across her chest. She has no bra on under the thin T-shirt.

    ‘Need help?’ She brushes a windblown strand of hair from her lips.

    My attempt at enthusiasm has not won her over. She rubs her upper arms. Like me, she’s not dressed to be outside in this temperature.

    ‘Oh God, I’m sorry.’ I stand and offer my hand formally. ‘Andrew.’

    She flicks the plait over her shoulder and for a moment I think she’s so pissed off she’s going to ignore my hand, but then her handshake is strong and dry and she says, ‘Sarah,’ without smiling. Her eyes are that pale blue-green that makes the pupils darkly noticeable.

    I start again. ‘Sorry to disturb you. I can see you’re busy. But – I’m from next door. Can’t get my water to work.’

    She doesn’t like me saying I’m from next door, her pupils have shrunk.

    ‘Is this your place? They certainly built these railway carriages to last.’ Talking is never my strong point.

    ‘Ah, no – not mine exactly.’ A response at last. ‘I just rent it. Did you want to fill your buckets?’

    She’s going to get rid of me as fast as she can, that much is clear.

    ‘Yes, please. That’d be great.’

    She hesitates and I realise she probably doesn’t want to leave me with the head while she goes to turn on the hose.

    ‘Where’s the tap? Round the side?’

    ‘Yes, yes. Round there.’ She points.

    I pick up my buckets.

    When I get back with the buckets filled, she’s gone inside. And taken the head.

You turn the matchbox over and over on the bench. Wood pigeons murmur, sparrows chirp and flutter under the eaves. Smoke from your cigarette drifts across the garden.

    Jean had waved the packet at you. ‘Go on, take them,’ she said. ‘Take them all! They’ll help you think while you’re walking the dog.’ You took two. There’s a chance Michael won’t smell anything if you smoke them outside.

    At your feet, Honey slobbers and gnaws at a chew, head to one side, teeth bared. A blue Basildon Bond envelope lies on your lap: a letter for you this morning from Pierce. She’s sent a photograph. She poses in uniform, chin lifted, jaunty, under the circular light of an empty operating theatre, one arm leaning on the operating table, the other hand on her hip. A big grin on her face because she’s Theatre Sister now.

    What will you write back?

    Last night at the hospital dinner dance you sat with Michael at the top table with the other consultants and their wives. The Senior Obstetrician, eyes like beads behind his round spectacles, pressed his thigh against yours while his wife, opposite, talked about choosing between a frilled or a box-pleated hem for the loose cover she was making for her settee. The stiff lace on your gown chafed the under side of your upper arms.

    But this is not what you’re supposed to be thinking about.

    Mrs Hubbard’s key scrapes at the door.

    ‘For God’s sake get yourself out of the house for an hour or two while that woman’s here. That’s why Michael hired her,’ Jean had said as she left with Elaine.

    You tread the cigarette into the lawn and get up to prepare a tea tray for Mrs Hubbard with the Royal Albert china, silver sugar bowl and tongs, the Nice biscuits. In the hall, floral overall draped loosely across her bony front, Mrs Hubbard nods as she hangs up her coat. Seconds later she has disappeared to the sitting room to clear the grate.

    You stand in front of the sink and stare at the cracks in the green block of Fairy soap. Think, think about the notebook Jean found hidden under the mattress of the bed where Andy sleeps when he stays with her.

    The breakfast bowls plop, one by one, into the bubbles and slide below the surface.

    Michael keeps on about sending Elaine away. Jean, and even Hoggie, seem to agree. ‘You’d all get your lives back,’ is what Jean has said. Everyone acts as though your desire to keep Elaine at home is simple selfishness.

    You make your fingers loosen their grip, watch the wooden handle of the washing-up brush slip into the bubbles and out of sight.

    They say Elaine will not know the difference, will not know where she is. And yet, when she was a baby, a doctor said she’d know the smell of your breast. Not the milk, but your skin. Experiments have shown a baby will turn towards a pad that has been next to the mother’s breast, rather than to one on to which the mother has expressed her milk. ‘But it’s not just Elaine you need to think about, is it?’ Hoggie said last night, a hand on your wrist. ‘It’s the whole family.’

    Birdsong comes in through the open back door. You dry your hands, tug at the ties of your apron; dump it on the draining board. You pick up the notebook, hold it to your breast and walk out of the back door, leaving it open. Honey pads behind. You head for the river.

    The notepad is tatty, its cardboard cover creased and soft with use. ‘TOP SECRET’ it says in red ink, underlined three times with black. On the first few pages Andy has written lists of questions, the answers written upside down at the bottom of each page, like clues for a crossword puzzle. Every question has something to do with rope.

    The pages of the notepad are brittle as dead leaves and the pencil lines have scored hollows and ridges in the paper. Towards the back, there’s page after page with drawings of gallows in various stages of completion. One has a pin man hanging, the circle for his head drooping to one side. He looks dead, or dying. Seeing it, you’d remembered the incident with Susie and your scalp tightened.

    ‘Just look at this,’ Jean said, showing you a page with six dashes, with the first letter, A, filled in.
Clue: Stress placed on rope due to increasing the velocity of the load. Answer: Abrasion resistance (A)
.

    She flicked more pages. ‘It’s his name, he’s spelling out his name, over and over again.
Double Braid. D. A very strong and flexible rope that doesn’t hockle
. What does “hockle” mean? –
doesn’t hockle, kink or rotate under a load
. It’s from that big book of Dad’s, isn’t it? On knots?’

    ‘What,
Ashley
’s?’

    ‘Look:
Devil’s Rope
. What’s that?’

    ‘No idea.’

    The dashes and drawings, surely – you think now – they’re just a version of that word game, hangman. You’d wanted Jean to stop flicking, to hand the notebook over. Playing it down in case she mentioned something to Michael, you said, ‘Andy only knows a lot about rope and knots because he spends time with Dad.’