Ghost Song (21 page)

When the street buzzer went Hilary jumped and looked annoyed at the interruption, but when it turned out to be Judy Randall she was pleased. Judy had brought in page proofs for a book—something about a television series on Edwardian dining tables it was, which the Harlequin had apparently helped with. She was a large colourful lady, very warm and friendly, and she drew Caley into the discussion, passing the proofs over for him to see, explaining that Hilary had done some of the background research for the TV programme.

‘It's very interesting,' Caley said, studying the proofs. He added, ‘It should sell very well,' and Judy beamed.

‘And did you see they managed to reproduce the sheet music for that “Tipsy Cake” song?' she said to Hilary. ‘The cover as well.' She flipped through the pages. ‘Here it is. A sozzled-looking butler helping a cook to slosh sherry onto a jammy creamy sponge cake. You found the original for the song, d'you remember?'

‘So I did. I came across it in that antiquarian place near St Martin's Lane,' said Hilary. ‘It's reproduced well, hasn't it? The cover was a bit battered but it looks all right. I'm glad they didn't do one of those computer-repair jobs on it: it's old and it ought to
look
old. It was one of Toby Chance's songs. Chance wrote the lyrics and Douglas wrote the music.'

‘Yes. It's way out of copyright, of course,' said Judy, ‘but we've given them a credit anyway. The song's being used as a backing track for the episode on puddings next month—they're hoping to record it later this week, I think. The Harlequin will be listed in the acknowledgements, of course.'

‘Toby Chance was part-owner of the Tarleton,' said Hilary, and Caley felt his heart skip a beat. ‘I've been reading up on him a bit,' she said, still studying the proofs. ‘I think he'd make a good subject for a radio programme sometime: one of those late-night mini-biographies. If I can find out enough to put a presentation together, I'm going to see if Shona will pitch it to Radio 4. Apparently Toby vanished around the start of the first world war which makes him a bit mysterious, so he could be quite an intriguing subject.'

‘Oh God, not another mystery about that place,' said Judy, tucking her canvas trousers into the tops of her boots, preparatory to cycling through London's streets. She was wearing a woolly hat with a pom-pom today and a kind of Elizabethan tabard which looked as if it had been knitted out of magenta string. Caley could not help thinking Mary would have wondered how Judy could dress so peculiarly.

‘I don't think there's really a mystery about Toby,' Hilary was saying. ‘I expect he fought in the war and was killed. But when you think how the place has been closed for nearly a hundred years, you do wonder a bit. I know we all make jokes about the Tarleton, but it
is
a strange set-up.'

‘Probably the lease ran out and nobody could afford to renew it,' said Judy and took herself off.

‘What a disappointment if it really was just that,' said Hilary, half to herself. And then, to Caley, ‘But they say life's full of disappointments, don't they?'

‘Yes, they do.'

O
NE OF THE DISAPPOINTMENTS
of Caley's life was the knowledge that he had been grafted onto a stranger's family. It was how he had always seen it, all through the years from his earliest childhood memories. A nothing person with no roots, treated with false kindness, with a conscious air of you are no different to our own children. He was given the same things and opportunities as the others: schooling, outings, music lessons, swimming. He found swimming tiring, but he liked the music lessons which were at the house of a retired music teacher. The house smelt of biscuits and there were large pot plants obscuring the light from most of the windows, but Caley did not mind. He liked the patterns the music made and he was pleased when the teacher said he had a real talent.

‘You should practise every day,' she said. ‘One hour every day.' Caley did not say this would be difficult because there was no piano at home.

Sometimes, in those years when he was growing up and becoming aware of the world, he felt an actual physical pain from the longing to know his own family—to be able to listen to their memories and histories. But at that time it had not been very common for an adopted child to request the name of its natural mother—nor was it an automatic right—and it was not as easy to do so as it later became.

He was eighteen when he was given the few odds and ends that had apparently come from his own family's past. Here are some things we think belonged to your grandparents or great-uncles or -aunts, said his adoptive parents, smiling with delight at their own benevolence. Only a handful of things and they don't look very informative—a bit obscure, in fact—but now you're of age, we think you're old enough to have them. His adoptive mother had said, ‘We haven't looked at them in any detail, and as you know we were never told your family's name—but you became a Merrick ever since you came to us as a small baby. It's how we've always thought of you. One of our own.'

‘Some of the photographs are of this very area, so it does look as if your family might have come from these parts,' said his adoptive father, and added that he believed adoption agencies did try to keep a child in a similar background to its real family. ‘Of course, we're your real family now,' he had said.

Caley had accepted the things without saying much, but nearly forty years later he could still remember how furious he had been not to have been given them sooner. Had the fools not understood that when you had never known your own family, you wanted every fragment of them you could get?

The obscure odds and ends were packed into an old shoe box. Caley carried it into the bathroom which was the only place to be sure of privacy in the house, and locked the door. The box contained a rag-bag miscellany, although at that stage of his life the dog-eared scraps of paper and the faded postcards sent to anonymous people—most of them faded to near-illegibility anyway—had not been especially important. The best prize was the photographs. Seated on the narrow windowsill, trying not to let the scent of lavatory cleaner permeate these precious scraps, Caley pored over the photographs, thinking that the faces might be his grandparents or great-grandparents or long-ago uncles or cousins. Meagre as they were, they were still fragments to be jealously guarded and on which to build dreams. From that day, he had begun to weave fantasies, doing so late at night when the family were all in bed, or at weekends when they went off somewhere in a noisy group.

When, shortly before his nineteenth birthday, the abrupt, frightening attacks of struggling for breath began and chronic asthma was eventually diagnosed, he had seized on it gratefully because it was a genuine reason not to go out with them. It was the middle of the Swinging Sixties, not that Caley ever swung anywhere or really wanted to. But the younger members of the family—the two boys and three girls—were always off to some disco or wine bar or club. Great fun, they said. He should come with them. Caley found it a relief to be able to say crowded places brought on an asthma attack, and that smoky pubs and cinemas were a nightmare. Best he stayed at home. They pretended to be sorry and concerned, but Caley knew they were secretly relieved. After a while he found he could almost will himself into an attack. This was useful, although he conscientiously avoided doing it too often, but it meant he was often left to his own devices; it meant he could lie on his bed, staring up at the ceiling, and think about the photographs and the people and places in them.

At those times he would take out the shoe box and pore over the faded ink and the smudgy faces and places in the photographs. He recognized most of the streets—his adoptive parents had been right that they had been taken in this part of London. People stood self-consciously in the small park where he himself had played as a child with his adoptive brothers and sisters, or posed against street backgrounds. One photo, clearly a professionally taken shot for a postcard, was of an ugly old facade with a playbill displayed in a case on the right of double doors, and the words, ‘Benefit performance by Miss Marie Lloyd' just about readable. Caley recognized the facade at once: it was the old Tarleton Music Hall.

The Tarleton. He looked at the photographs again, and this time realized there were links to the Tarleton in several of them. A few blurry photographs, the half of a programme, some sheet music with the title missing, but with the words, ‘First performed at the Tarleton Music Hall, in…' It was annoying not to have the date on that one, although there was another piece of music that had a faded date of February 1887 in one corner. One of the postcards said, ‘Pleased to see you at the T last night—wasn't Bunstable a scream! We all had supper at the Linkman afterwards—pity you couldn't come. Fondest love, S.'

It was interesting, but at the time it did not strike Caley as particularly noteworthy. Someone in his family a couple of generations back had most likely been stage-struck. Some unknown great-aunt, perhaps, who in her giddy youth had dreamed of walking onto a stage lit by footlights or even by the flaring limes of the Victorian years, and singing or dancing in front of an adoring audience. Or someone might have been enamoured of one of the Tarleton's performers. Teenagers today collected photographs and articles about pop stars and fell in love with footballers from afar—this could be an Edwardian version of that.

But the more he thought about it, the more he began to wonder. Supposing it was something more than that? Supposing the Tarleton was in some way bound up with the family he had never known? He went through the box's contents again, this time looking for the Tarleton and finding several more links to it. In that moment his quest was born—he hit on the word ‘quest' purely by chance, but he liked it for its romantic associations. A quest was a search, a hunt for something immensely precious. And the old Tarleton's the link, he thought, aware of a thump of excitement. It's a link to my real family. A secret link—something to be pursued without anyone knowing, without the risk of people spoiling it by making fun of it or asking senseless questions.

From that day he began to gather information about the Tarleton and its history, working quietly and unobtrusively, but with complete dedication. Nothing was too insignificant; he seized greedily on every sentence ever written about it, every shred of tattered gossip spun in green rooms, and every scandal and rumour whispered in taverns, recording everything in a thick notebook he kept in the shoe box. He pushed it to the very back of his wardrobe, folding an old jacket over it so it would not be noticed.

It was vaguely irritating that when he wanted to read his precious notes or look at the photographs and cards, he either had to wait for the others to go out or lock himself in the lavatory. After a time he waited for them to go out. It was impossible to lose yourself in private dreams when people kept rattling the door and demanding to know if you were all right, or whether you had eaten too much rhubarb pie at dinner and wanted a dose of bismuth.

Marriage to Mary when he was twenty-two interrupted the search, and the dreams receded for a while.

The noisy kindly adoptive family had moved away from the area by then. ‘But we'll stay in touch,' they said firmly. ‘You'll come to visit us and we'll come to visit you.'

‘Oh yes,' said Caley, knowing he would not, knowing he would let the link gradually dwindle to an exchange of Christmas and birthday cards.

He did not tell Mary about his quest because she would not have understood it any more than his adoptive family. Why must he frowst over things that had happened years and years ago? she always said if he brought books home from the library, or made notes about local history. It could not be good for his eyes. Why not take up something practical? Gardening or even carpentry—carpentry was always useful in a house. Shelves and fitted cupboards and such like.

The marriage was not exactly a mistake, because Caley was fond of Mary and it took him away from the too loud family who had been kind but with whom he had not had much in common. It provided a degree of independence; he liked having his own small house which Mary had found for them, saying surely they could afford a mortgage on Caley's salary from the council. And hadn't he said something about having a small nest egg? You could not do better than invest a nest egg in property, said Mary.

‘It's only a very small amount,' Caley said. ‘Not really worth drawing on.' He had told Mary about the money in an unguarded moment and had since regretted it. It was somehow a deeply private thing, that money that had apparently been left to him by his real parents, and it was part of the dream. Secret. So he said they would have a mortgage for the house and they would afford it somehow.

The house was in Candle Street, which Mary said could not be better; it meant they would be near her sister and Caley's adoptive family were not far away—he would want to keep in touch with them, wouldn't he? The area was not exactly the best, but the house could be cleaned up really nicely and given a lick or two of paint, said Mary. Well, no, there was not really room for a piano—in any case, the neighbours would not care to hear piano music through the wall. And surely it was years since he had played anyway? Not since he was twelve or thirteen, wasn't it? So he would have lost the knack, said Mary comfortably. They could have a smart radiogram, though, which would be much better. Caley could play his music on that.