The Children's Bach (7 page)

What
was
the thing? They pointed out these eventlets to each other. They did not discuss or pass judgment, but defined themselves against the attitudes revealed by the unwitting characters in these dramas. They wanted to know each other less than they wanted to agree. Harmony! To be each other. They examined clothes in shop windows.

‘You could wear that jacket,' said Philip.

‘I'm afraid of looking like a small man,' said Athena.

‘I'm afraid of looking like an ugly woman.'

The waiter had a face like an unchipped statue. He served them in a way Philip provoked in many waiters: with delicate sideways movements he swooped the cups on to the table, and shone into Philip's eyes a smile of tender regard.

‘Where does the other boy go all day?' said Philip.

Athena had to make an effort. People seemed to feel a duty to question her about this. ‘To a centre. They come for him every morning in a taxi. But only during the term. He's with us all summer. Dexter and Vicki have taken him to the pool today.' Was that enough?

‘Do you work, or anything? Not that I –'

‘I used to. I used to –'

Two girls pushed aside the fly curtain and clacked into the cafe. They wore ear-rings like tombstones and blackish lipstick that made them look as if they had been sucking blood. Their legs were fleshless.

‘Look,' said Athena. ‘Look at those two. I bet they are the kind of girls you like.'

One of them stopped and leaned over the table.

‘Hi, Philip!' she said, with her shoulder across Athena's face. ‘Remember me?'

Her spiky hair gleamed with gel; her eyes were dots. Philip ducked his head and turned up his wrinkling smile to her, and she passed on, satisfied. She and her friend arranged themselves at the next table, well within Philip's eye-line. To Athena they looked very young, and rapacious.

‘Sorry I couldn't introduce you,' said Philip. ‘I've forgotten . . .'

‘Are you famous?' said Athena. She laughed.

Philip's afternoon lurched in its tracks, and righted itself. ‘Better ask Elizabeth that,' he said.

*

Poppy vacuumed the living room carpet and stacked the newspapers under the sink. When Elizabeth came they would go into Campion and buy her school textbooks secondhand. Poppy could not understand the mentality of kids who underlined their books and wrote stupid comments in biro: she longed for brandnew books, their glossy modern pages and luscious smell, but there was no point in going on about it. Even her uniform was secondhand. At the end of last term, Philip took her to the new school, Clever Girls' High as he insisted on calling it, even out loud on the tram, and they were guided to a great big barn with no windows and a concrete floor where other girls' mothers, in aprons and tight perms, helped them sort through mounds of grey pleated skirts, gingham dresses and red jumpers, looking for the right size, which in Poppy's case was so extremely small that she was ashamed, and her shame mingled with the admiration and vanity she always felt at being in public places with her father, who was different from everyone else's, younger-looking and not a dag, and he talked slowly and quietly to people, looking them right in the eye and not doing false laughter with workers like other fathers she had seen. There was, on the trestle table, one last pleated skirt small enough, and Philip got his hand on it a split second before the mother of the only other very short girl, who cast at Poppy a glance of complicated camaraderie and relief: now she, not Poppy, would have to buy a new one in a proper shop with mirrors and fitting rooms, and the pleats would still be tacked together round the hem and it would smell clean, not op-shoppy and doggy and wet-jumpery like all the uniforms in this gloomy building with the swinging light bulbs and the canteen price lists still on the wall from the year that had just finished.

Poppy went into her bedroom and put on the uniform. She did this at least once a day, to practise getting used to it, and because she could not quite believe, from one day to the next, in its extreme ugliness. Worst were the shoes, great black lace-up clod-hoppers with square toes. Would they ever get soft? She stood in front of the mirror in the hall and stared at her brown, stick-like legs and long feet. Elizabeth came in behind her. Her eyes too were drawn to these boat-like extremities. They reminded her of the ankleboots worn by Ant and Bee in a book her mother had read to her. She thought of her mother and the sight of Poppy's anxiety made her voice tremble.

‘Head prefect of Mosquito Girls' High,' she said.

Poppy turned round with a crooked smile. She took the bait. ‘I know what!' she said. ‘Let's write a story. Let's start like this: “Things were buzzing at Mosquito Girls' High”.'

‘The headmistress's name is Miss Queenie Bee,' said Elizabeth.

‘And she says to all the girls at assembly, ‘‘If there's one thing that really bugs me . . .”'

‘And no-one wants to be the school swot. Swat, get it?'

They pranced and frolicked in the hall. Elizabeth got bored with it long before Poppy did.

‘Come on,' she said. ‘Let's get this show on the road. Did Shithead leave you any money for the stuff?'

‘No,' said Poppy. ‘He said for you to pay and tell him how much.'

They sat in the high seats at the back of the bus, and Poppy sank into her book. Up at the front sat a European woman in her forties, dressed in a satin suit and high-heeled shoes as if for an outing. Elizabeth could not work out her relationship to the two men she appeared to be with, who were conversing in the seat opposite. As the bus swung round into Russell Street, one of the men tossed a piece of screwed-up paper on to the high shelf of the woman's breasts. She looked down very slowly, and very slowly she picked the rubbish off her bosom; she was smiling with humiliation. Elizabeth stood up to walk down the bus to the door, with Poppy stumbling after her, still reading. The woman looked up at Elizabeth as she passed. They held eyes. The woman made the grimace, and Elizabeth returned it: corners of the mouth go down, head tilts to one side, shoulders come up in a shrug:
are they worth it?
It was a secret showing of badges, of scars. Had Poppy seen? It would contaminate her. But Poppy was finishing a chapter. She kept a grip on Elizabeth's sleeve and forged down the page with her eyes. Her feet were braced well apart on the jolting floor.

They found the textbooks and paid for them, but Poppy lingered to admire the blocky reams of paper and the silver bulldog clips clamped into a chain. Elizabeth picked up a handsome bound diary.

‘This is reduced,' she said. ‘I'll buy it.'

They stood by the register, but the boy serving would not come. Minutes passed. Poppy lounged and read on. Elizabeth observed that the diary was invisible in her arms among their already wrapped purchases. The adrenalin squirted and twinkled in her veins.
Oh! did I forget to pay for this one? Sorry! You kept us waiting for so long! How much is it again?
‘Come on,' she said to Poppy in an ordinary voice, and walked quickly towards the door.

‘
Elizabeth
!' said Poppy.

‘Shutup!' she hissed. She barged out on to the bright street. Poppy trotted after her, keeping her finger in the book to mark her place, and caught up with her half a block away. Elizabeth was panting. She sat down on the deep window ledge of a furniture shop and pulled the furious girl to face her. ‘Now don't you
ever
do what I just did,' she said.

‘
Me?
' said Poppy. ‘It's got nothing to do with
me
!'

‘You're such a puritan!' said Elizabeth. ‘You make me feel like a criminal.'

‘You
are
a criminal. Taking other people's stuff is wrong.'

‘You should talk! What about that camera.'

Poppy held her book to her chest. ‘That was different. Finding things is not the same as stealing them.'

‘You could've reported it.'

‘I will, then,' said Poppy. ‘I'll take it back.'

‘Don't be pathetic. It was years ago – you don't even remember which motel it was.'

‘It was one of them. On that highway.'

‘It's too late now.'

They were both red and breathing hard. They stared away from each other, their arms folded round their possessions. Cars passed. The asphalt was spongy.

‘We'll both burn in hell,' said Elizabeth.

‘I don't believe in hell.'

‘We'll burn somewhere else, then.'

‘Are you going to keep the diary?'

‘Are you going to keep the camera?'

‘I might. Or I might not. I might . . . donate it to charity.'

‘They'd know it was hot. People don't give away good stuff that works.'

Elizabeth waited. Poppy stood up and brushed off the seat of her pants. ‘All right,' she said. ‘Let's go to Allans. I feel like playing the pianos.'

The house of music was lumbered with grands, a noble line of them, each fluttering a many-digited price tag. Their lids were propped open as if to catch a breath of air. Their perfect teeth, their glossy flanks, their sumptuous smell caused customers to tiptoe past them on their way to the secondhand uprights at the back; but Poppy fronted up to a big black Bösendorfer and settled herself on the bench. She handed her book to Elizabeth, wiped her palms on her thighs and launched into something that used all her fingers.

‘That's a lovely piece of music, that is!' sang out a young salesman who was sitting at a Steinway, five juggernauts down the line.

She stumbled, she paused to listen to him. He picked it up and played the next two bars. He waited for her, poising his hands above the keys and raising his eyebrows. She hesitated, with a glance and a smile at Elizabeth, and then she skated away into the elements. Their game was clever: the man teased, the girl echoed him, they were flirting with each other, laughing; they played three slow chords in unison. People stopped and listened, pretending not to, because it was so intimate. Elizabeth wandered away to the head of the stairs. From the lower regions the grim thumping of an electric bass rolled up and throbbed in the metal banisters.

*

Vicki spent an hour getting herself ready. She tied a diaphanous scarf round her head, stuck a yellow rose in it, and put a lot of makeup on her flat, smooth, pale face. She looked striking, and flustered because of the lipstick she had rubbed into her cheekbones.

‘One thing you can be sure of,' said Dexter in the car. ‘No-one else in the place will be dressed like you.'

How would you know, thought Vicki; you never go to any places. ‘Why don't you ever wear makeup, Thena?' she said.

‘Athena doesn't believe in makeup,' said Dexter. ‘Do you dear. She's got beautiful skin.'

‘I don't know how to put it on,' said Athena.

‘You don't need it, dear,' said Dexter.

‘I wouldn't mind a bit of feminine mystique, once in a while,' said Athena.

‘You don't want that rubbish,' said Dexter.

Athena sat beside him in the front seat with straight spine and folded hands. It alarmed Vicki to see her shoulders tremble with holding back. ‘Elizabeth used to be against makeup,' she chattered. ‘But now she even puts polish on her toenails. She says, ‘‘I've made my reputation as a strong woman. I reckon I've earned the right to a couple of red blobs on my extremities.”'

Athena laughed. ‘She's clever, isn't she.'

‘A bit too clever, sometimes,' said Dexter. He waltzed the car from lane to lane with big flourishes of the steering wheel. ‘I can't even remember the last time we went dancing. Will you have a dance with me, Vicki?'

‘Dexter!' she said. ‘Nobody dances
with
anybody any more!'

‘Have they started already?' said Athena at the door.

‘No,' said Vicki. ‘It's just a tape.'

‘Can't they turn it down a bit?' said Dexter.

Elizabeth saw them from the bar where she and Philip were leaning while the other band packed up. ‘She's brought her mum and dad,' she said.

Philip turned round. ‘Looks embarrassed, doesn't she.'

‘Wouldn't you? Get the look on his face.'

‘I like him,' said Philip. ‘He's like a character out of a Russian novel, or a Wagner opera. A noble soul.'

‘A what?'

‘He's the coolest person here. He's not even trying.'

‘You're not kidding. That shirt. It's like a pyjama top.'

Vicki skidded up to the bar beside them.

‘Cute scarf,' said Philip.

‘Reckon?' said Vicki with a triumphant glance at Elizabeth. She ordered a Kahlua and milk.

‘What's that stuff?' said Dexter. ‘I'll get us a jug. Anyone want to share a jug?'

‘I'm drinking whisky,' said Elizabeth.

‘I'll have one too,' said Athena.

‘This whole place is painted black,' said Dexter. ‘It's like a vision of hell.'

‘Shutup, Dexter,' said Vicki. ‘Don't be so
loud
.'

‘This isn't a proper glass,' said Dexter. ‘Here, mate – you've given me a plastic glass.'

The barman, who had two false plaits twined into his hair at the back, shrugged and served the next person.

‘For safety,' said Philip. He nodded at Dexter and turned his mouth down at the corners. What if I told him about the headbangers, he thought; he wouldn't believe me. Philip downed his drink and walked away: the crowd parted for him.

Safety! Dexter stood holding the plastic glass of beer and stared around him. These kids didn't look as if they would smash glass. They had cold, passionless faces. He knew the phrase for it: ‘
l' inébranlable résolution de ne pas être ému
.' They were like refugees, war orphans, thronging in their drab clothes. It was too late to get out. The big room was packed solid and he was backed up against the bar. He looked for Athena, to mention the Baudelaire to her. She was emptying her glass in one swig, and her face was already turned towards the stage which at that moment went black.