The Whole Story and Other Stories (13 page)

scottish love songs

Violet was being haunted by a pipe band in full regalia. There had never been so many burly men about the house and not one of them needing feeding. They swished their kilts through the front room, scraped the tall stems of their bagpipes against the ceiling and knocked their bearskins squint on the doorframes and the pelmets. They sent ornaments flying. They made the decanter and glasses shiver in the cabinet. They paraded up and down the stairs and rumpled the rug on the landing. They disturbed the bedroom curtains and left the pictures hanging askew.

They came at all hours of the day and night and they always played the same tune. The whole house shook with it. It shook even after they’d left. Violet’s hand shook as she bent down, slow because it was sore to bend down, and picked up the robin again, the chaffinches on their branch, the young courting couple one on either side of the stile. She put them back in their places. She went up the stairs, she felt the creak beneath her feet but she couldn’t hear the creak. She straightened the pictures. She saw her reflection in the glass of the picture of the birds on the water. She was looking ten years younger. Well well well, she said out loud to herself. But it was like speaking out loud next to a waterfall; she couldn’t hear anything beyond the tune going round and round in her head. It was sad. It was good. It was what you’d call rousing. On the landing she bent down and straightened the rug. Then she straightened herself up again and went back down the stairs.

A girl who Violet didn’t know had also taken to visiting her. She came in a bus all the way out to Dalston. She was young and not married yet and so had nothing better to do. She always brought Violet a cake or a packet of biscuits from the expensive shops where she lived. She was clearly a girl who had never known hunger. Here she was at the door again.

What do you want now? Violet said.

The girl was a pest. She was a free service for elderly people. She had the good clear way the skin is and the prettiness of the well-off. Anyway Violet couldn’t hear a thing she said.

They sat round the fire in the front room.

You’ll not get the good of that, wearing it inside, Violet shouted.

The girl took her jacket off.

You’ll be cold, Violet shouted, switching on another bar.

The girl took her jumper off too. She was young and warmed up easily. She went and made a pot of tea in Violet’s kitchen and brought it through on the tray with cups and the things from the expensive shops out on plates.

The girl and the pipe band were not Violet’s only visitors. She could get the doctor to visit if she needed to by shouting down the phone. Her daughter came round several times a month, sometimes with her husband and sometimes without. When she came alone she read the property section of the local paper or went round the house lifting things up and looking at them and putting them back down. Violet watched her sitting there across the room counting the number of glasses in the cabinet. You can tell it’s crystal when you ping it with your finger, Violet had taught her when she was a little girl. After Violet married the house was always full of glass. The sixties and the seventies were a real time of coloured glass. I wish she would get up and open the cabinet and ping the crystal with her finger now, Violet thought; she closed her eyes in the wake of the endless tune and imagined her daughter rising out of the chair, sliding the glass door back in its groove, choosing one wineglass, removing it without nudging any of the others, holding it up by the stem near her ear like the forks they used to tune pianos, getting her finger ready to give it the hint of a flick, just, to test if it was true. But when she opened her eyes her daughter hadn’t moved an inch. Now she was eyeing the hostess trolley next to the cabinet. She pointed at it. Her mouth moved. She was saying something.

Have it, Violet said, waving her away like waving away a fly. Take it, it’s yours.

Her daughter’s husband these days was a man whose job was making things in his garage. Every time Violet had to go and visit them he was in the garage making things. Whenever he came to Violet’s house he stood by the door or leaned on the back of the chair being patient while she spoke to Violet more than she did when she came alone. Not that Violet could hear anyway, nothing in her ears now but the pipes, fainter if the band wasn’t still in the house, loud if it was, and not that her daughter or the husband even noticed it at all; they were deaf and blind to it and last Wednesday the pipers, who though they were a smartly sporranned and gartered lot still looked like they’d been through a war or two, had figure-of-eighted under both their noses in the kitchenette providing a gallant accompaniment to them standing over the table reading the life insurance leaflet that someone had put through the doors of the road that Violet lived in. Violet had laughed, clapping her hands out in front of her. The daughter and her husband had exchanged glances. They thought she was old and mad. Violet pointed at the chipped ornaments on the sideboard. Look, she shouted. They went back to reading the leaflet. You could get £80,000, if you died.

Violet blinked awake. It wasn’t her daughter here in the chair today, it was that girl. She had been here all afternoon. She was young enough to curl her legs right under her in the chair, like a cat that lived here. Violet had no idea why she was here. She had been to visit many times but Violet didn’t even know her name.

The girl saw Violet watching her. She uncurled her legs. She sat up.

You ever been there? Violet said.

The girl didn’t understand.

I said Canada, Violet said louder. You ever been to Canada?

The girl shook her head.

Not been to the place with the falls? Violet said. A rich girl like you that could go anywhere she wanted in the world?

The girl smiled.

Oh I’m telling you. The noise off those falls is louder than anything. You can hear them from miles away. Miles away we were and we heard them. When we were stood right on the edge I couldn’t hear a thing. So I can say I saw a wonder of the world. And I can also say I heard a wonder of the world. How many people are there can say that then? Out of all the millions of people there are in the world. Nineteen fifty-three. They had a place for the dancing. You know?

The girl nodded.

I could have been a different person, Violet said. The other side of the world.

The girl’s mouth opened and made the shape of a yes.

You should go, Violet said.

The girl nodded and piled the plates and cups together on the tray.

No, I don’t mean go now, I mean go there, go to Canada, that place, what’s it called? Violet said.

The girl smiled and looked at her watch. She lifted the tray and all the things slid together to one side. She was no good at knowing what to do with a tray. Violet watched the things silently clatter as they hit into one another but all there was was the noise they were making upstairs, the noise air could make coming out of an old leather lung, noise in the shape of a tune that shook the heart. Was it leather the bag was made of on bagpipes? She didn’t know. It was tough, anyway. It could take a lot. They were playing somewhere close, overhead, directly above in the bedroom maybe or maybe up in the loft with all the photographs in the boxes and the piled-up stuff Violet wouldn’t ever see again. They could kick it back to make room for themselves if they liked. They could make any mess they wanted. Violet didn’t mind.

That girl had come back into the living room again. She was pulling on her jumper. Her time at Violet’s house was up.

My daughter’s name is Jean, Violet said. I named her after Jean Simmons. You won’t have heard of Jean Simmons.

The girl’s ponytail reappeared out of the top of her jumper.

She was an actress, Jean Simmons, Violet said.

The girl said something. She rummaged about in the pocket of her jacket and brought out something. It was a little book. It was the size of her hand. She flipped it open in the middle. Its pages were blank. She fished about in her other pocket for a pen and wrote something down and showed it to Violet. Violet took the book and held it up close to her eyes. The girl had written the place she was from. Violet had known the insides of a lot of the houses there. She had cleaned for people who had money. They would all be different people in them now.

The place I just told you about, Violet said. I can’t remember the name.

The girl took the book back and wrote something down again. Violet squinted at it; under the word Chelsea it said: Canada. Violet pushed the book away in the girl’s hand.

No, she said. The place, the town where the water is. I can’t remember the name.

The girl wrote something else. She showed Violet the page, two more words with a question mark after them. Niagara Falls ?

That’s it, Violet said. That’s it. Niagara. Right on the edge and all that water. Smooth on the top like simmering and then it all falls away. It’ll be the same to this day. When you see it you can’t believe it, that people went over that edge in a barrel and survived, or fell in and were still living when they reached the bottom, but they did and they were, some of them. Not all of them. Now, she said. Listen. She took hold of the girl by the arm because the girl had looked at her watch again.

What, the girl’s mouth said, or who, or wait.

Violet sat herself up as straight as she could. She coughed. She swallowed. She cleared her throat. She waited for where her boys up above would get back to the start of their nimble lament again. She tapped her foot to count herself in and she sang the song to the rich girl.

Chelsea’s friend Amanda had appeared to Chelsea in a dream in the middle of the night, wearing no clothes. It was not the only dream Chelsea had had like this. She walked along the leafy white-housed roads (Chelsea lived in Chelsea) and thought hard of other things. She thought about aerodynamics. She thought about the contents of nitrogen and oxygen in air. She thought about how Mrs Waterman shouted all the time, like she was shouting across a ravine. She thought how it was spring on the other side of the world, winter was finished over there and just about to start here in this unnatural warm. It was far too warm for this time of year. She thought about what would happen if global warming continued destabilizing the climate. She thought about the pond in the middle of Hyde Park. She thought about how microbes breathe in water. She thought about how Amanda was a microbiologist. Once she had sent Chelsea a text message from the middle of a river saying AM STNDN IN MDDLE OF TAY WEARING FULL BIOHZARD SUIT FRM HD TO TOE!! LV TO Y FRM ME + MANY LIFEFORMS. That was last year, when Amanda was still here. With no clothes on Amanda was sitting crosslegged on her futon and looking straight at Chelsea. Chelsea had woken up in the middle of the night wet, saying the word no. Troposphere tropopause ozone layer stratosphere, she thought as she pushed the door of the deli open. The deli was a very good one. It had an excellent reputation. Stratopause mesosphere mesopause thermospere aurora. The atmosphere had a structure. Chelsea knew the correct names for its levels.

A lot of men in kilts were in the deli queueing behind Chelsea. When she left the deli, they left too. They were right behind her. She stopped in the middle of the pavement and turned round. They brayed their noise right at her. She laughed politely. They looked mud-spattered, they were grandly dressed, yet they looked as though they’d been sleeping rough.

She checked her purse for change. She put a couple of pounds down on the pavement by the big-buckled shoe of one of the men and signalled thank you. He ignored it. He more than ignored it; he turned his beard up at it. He was offended. Maybe they were more official than they seemed. Possibly they were something to do with the V&A.

But they marched squealing and wailing straight past the doors of the museum and they followed her all along the Brompton Road. She began to jog a little. She started to run. She dodged tourists and she crossed the road dodging the fast-coming cars. She ducked into Harrods. The doorman held the door open. They wouldn’t be allowed. But in they came, still following her, still making the awful noise. No security person did anything to help. They followed her through the Food Halls. They followed her through Jewellery. She doubled back and so did they; they crowded up the escalator behind her. She faced forward, innocent, staring straight ahead with one hand on the moving handbelt. But they were there squeeing and squawing and baying and bawing and heeing and hawing through Books then Toys then Leather Goods. They were following her down the stairs and out of the shop as if she were their bandmaster. They strutted behind her into Knightsbridge tube station where she lost them by ducking through the luggage gate.

It was the airport train. She sat in the first seat she came to. She held her breath. They would still be fumbling about at the top for change for the ticket machines, trying to squeeze themselves and their uniforms and instruments through the automatic ticket barriers. The train left. A man opposite was reading his newspaper. A woman next to him stared unfocussed at nothing. Chelsea opened the box to check the sushi was still all right. She shut the box and she shut her eyes. The train ran on to the next stop and the doors opened and she heard the brazen yelp of them coming from the carriage behind or ahead of her, and the doors closed. The man read his paper as if nothing was happening. The woman stared ahead at nothing. Another woman stared ahead at nothing. A woman along the carriage read a paper. Another read a book. A couple of people stood swaying with the train by the door. Two tourists in shorts leaned on a rucksack. Chelsea looked at the filthy floor. It had grey-white specks in its linoleum, like a fake starry sky beneath her feet. At every stop the doors opened, people got off and other people got on and the noise of them behind or ahead of her echoed beyond the train out into the network of tunnels.