The Devil's Music (8 page)

    Folding the curtains loosely, I push them into a back corner of the shed. Clouds scud over a pale blue sky. I find I’m glad not to be getting back into the Volvo for the return journey. I stack boxes and cans and carry them back to the shed. There seems to be too much to fit back into the space. Tangled coils of rope swing against the back of my neck. Later, I’ll investigate the shed contents more thoroughly.

    When I stick my head around the kitchen door, Susie is scrubbing mould from the deep grooves in the carriage window frames with a toothbrush.

    ‘Half an hour and I’ll be finished,’ she says, blowing her fringe out of her eyes. ‘Then we’d better make a move.’ She’s trembling with exertion. ‘I’ll feed the kids in that café on the corner.’

At the last minute, over fish and chips at the café, Susie has a change of heart and tries to persuade me to leave with her. ‘At least until the water’s sorted out,’ she says, fiddling her wedding ring round and round. ‘And the phone. Otherwise how will I get hold of you?’

    ‘I’ll use the phone box. Or the pub’ll have one.’

    ‘Well,’ she stands to wipe the twins’ mouths, one after the other, a hand on their heads to stop them squirming away. ‘And you’re OK for money now?’

    I nod. She’s already handed out cash to tide me over. She wants to sort an account for me to use while I’m down here, to buy paint and odds and ends; and food. Some warmer clothes. I wish she’d stop fussing.

    The kids slide down from the table. Outside, a guy has turned a hose on the window to spray off the salt. The three kids line up inside and stare as water pounds and sluices the glass.

    Susie sniffs and takes a breath. She’s going to start all over again.

    ‘There’s so much ... Richard kept saying she was bound to come to the funeral. But she didn’t.’

    ‘No.’

    ‘In the church I looked for her, kept turning round, thinking, I know she won’t look the same and I might not recognise her, but I didn’t know how to imagine her, except from
ancient
photographs. I don’t even know how old she is. Andy, I don’t even know her date of birth.’

    ‘No. 1920s?’

    ‘So, she’s seventy-odd?’

    ‘Sixty, I’d say.’

    Susie frowns. ‘Well, she was younger than Dad, but she’d have to be
late
sixties at least, surely.’

   
My mother is young and wears a headscarf, a navy Guernsey sweater over slacks, and she sits in a deckchair on the beach, squinting into a compact to apply her lipstick.

    ‘Jean gave me Hoggie’s address, years ago, when I was going through a crisis at university. She was living quite near me then, in Leeds. Remember Hoggie?’

    Red hair escaping from hairgrips, the nurse’s belt and starched white apron; a watch pinned upside down on the apron’s bib. I nod.

    The guy outside starts messing around for the kids’ benefit, holding the hose away for a second or two, then turning it back on to the glass, thumb over the end so water smacks the glass. Two of the kids leap about, pointing and yelling, but the bigger one puts his hands to his ears. He takes a step backwards, picking his nose. He watches as the other two clap and laugh, pull faces and shove at each other. They turn in unison, mirror images of each other, to the window again.

    Susie reads my mind. ‘Henry gets excluded. Those two are in their own little world. People hyphenate them. Y’know, “Paul-and-Matthew, do you want a biscuit? Paul-and-Matthew, do want to play?” Even I often call them The Twins.’

    The kid, Henry, takes another step back, away from the window and the noise of the water. The other two lean and roll together, a jumble of chubby arms and legs. Lost in each other. They shriek and point, eyes wide, when the hosepipe guy shoves open the door and strides in. Henry’s lip wobbles. He staggers back to the table. The hosepipe guy rattles his bucket and cloth and pulls a face back at the twins. Henry clambers past my knees to bury his head in Susie’s lap.

    ‘Tired, sweety?’

    Henry turns his head from side to side, slurping on his thumb. He lies with his foot thumping rhythmically up and down against my shin. I move my legs an inch or so but he wriggles, repositioning himself so that he can go on kicking me. Finally, I put a hand loosely around his ankle, half expecting loud complaint. Or a harder kick. But his foot stills. It feels such a delicate, breakable thing, his ankle. Like bone china. Susie gazes into the middle distance, a hand on his head. The leg I’m holding gradually relaxes, foot falling outwards.

    ‘I went to have tea with Hoggie quite regularly before Richard and I got married.’ Susie strokes the blond head on her lap. ‘Where were you then? Don’t think we knew.’ Her hand on Henry’s hair lifts and falls, lifts and falls.

    He must be asleep now. His ankle’s warm and still in my hand.

    ‘Hoggie’s in America now. We haven’t been in touch for years. She showed me their old nursing snaps. Holidays abroad: Monaco, and so forth. Biarritz. It helped.’

    I’ve got several photograph albums of my mother’s – thick pages, black-and-white photos with white scalloped edges – her comments (that strange habit nurses had of calling each other by surname only, like public schoolboys) and scattered exclamation marks under each one. They’re in a box in my room, in Triopetra. Letters too, from various nursing friends. I can’t remember how I got hold of them. Susie will probably be pissed off.

    ‘Now Jean’s gone, there’s no one left. Well, one or two of Dad’s patients were at his funeral, of course. Can’t believe there are still any around. That awful woman who gave me Big Doll one Christmas, remember? She hung around for years. And Mrs Hubbard still cleaned. But I felt like a child, really, an orphan. Bereft, you know?’

    Big Doll. That awful walking, talking doll with orange hair. Something happened  ...

    Susie gropes up her sleeve for a tissue and blows her nose. ‘Know what I did? I came home from the church hall tea-and-bloody-cakes afterwards, marched down to the bottom of the garden, kicked the fence and shouted at her. Bloody selfish woman.’

Susie fusses with the twins in the back of the Volvo – innumerable belts and buckles and beakers with spouty lids. Henry is already strapped in. He’s dropped his biscuit, is straining and stretching sideways to reach for it, biting on his lower lip. I open the door his side and retrieve the biscuit for him. From my pocket I take the small Monkey’s Fist I made earlier and place it on his lap. He stares down, then up at me. Says nothing. He looks at his mother, who is busy offering a selection of toys to the other two. He balances the biscuit carefully on his knee and picks up the Monkey’s Fist instead. Turns it in his fingers; lifts it to his nose. He closes both hands around it. I’m pleased to see I judged the size about right. It’s a good fit, small enough. He lifts his cupped hands to his nose once more and his eyes flick to me and away. I close the door.

    Susie pauses half in, half out, of the driver’s door. ‘You
sure
you don’t mind being on your own here for a bit? I might be able to make it down next weekend but  ...’

    ‘I’ll be fine.’

    ‘Well – rather you than me.’ She reaches up to kiss my cheek. ‘This place has always given me the willies. The
wind
!’ She shudders, stretching her fleece over the distended belly.

    ‘I loved it.’

    ‘Yeah,’ she pats my shoulder, ‘I know.’

    Once they’ve gone, things drift. I wander down the narrow corridors of the carriages and slide open the heavy doors to the train compartments we used as bedrooms. There’s an old trunk in one, made of what looks like thick cardboard and covered with peeling luggage labels. Back in the living area I notice a grey rug spread across the sofa back. My mother’s hospital blanket, her name stitched, red, into a corner.

No one else is listening to Honey making wolf noises outside the back door because they are all rushing round the kitchen getting ready for Elaine’s christening.

    Auntie Jean is singing at the sink and washing up. Father is brushing down his jacket. Hoggie is helping Susie eat her egg with the special boiled-egg spoon that’s made of bone, and making patterns on a plate with triangle sandwiches at the same time. Everything’s all squeezed together and no one talks much.

    Mummy is upstairs.

    Honey makes two loud barks, and her nose sniffs at the bottom of the door. Father opens the back door to put the rubbish out and Honey pushes in between his legs. He gets her collar and drags her out again. Her claws make a skidding, scratching sound on the lino. Her tail is between her legs.

    Auntie Jean pulls the plug out and dries her hands on the roller towel. She throws a tea towel at Father and says, ‘Not today of all days, Michael,’ in a cross voice. She puts a cloth on a breakfast tray and toast in the toast rack for Mummy’s breakfast in bed. I follow her up the stairs. The bedroom door is shut. Auntie Jean stops outside.

    ‘You’ve had your breakfast, Andy,’ she says. ‘Go and play, I’m going to help Mummy get Elaine ready. We’ll be busy.’

    I go and look for Hoggie. Hoggie is her nurse name. Her real name is Harriet Amelia Hogg.

    Harriet Amelia Hogg.

    Harriet Amelia Hogg.

    She is still in the kitchen with Susie. Susie has yellow egg on her face and hands.

    ‘I’ve got some new knots to show you.’

    She says, ‘Sorry, Andy, can’t play now, I’ve got to get this sister of yours into her pretty frock.’

    The christening day was meant to be jolly like Christmas with jokes and laughing and treats. I go outside. Honey is tied to the railings by the French doors. Her collar and lead smell of hot car seats. She has her head on her paws and every time she hears Auntie Jean’s voice her eyes go to the kitchen window. She lifts up her head and wags her tail when Auntie Jean calls me to come and put on my new shorts.

    And then we go in Auntie Jean’s car to fetch Grampy. There is a little metal lid to open and close the ashtray. Open. Close. Open. The silver has black on it that rubs off on to my hands.

    ‘Leave that alone, please, Andy,’ Auntie Jean says. ‘Here we are now. Look.’

    We’re at Grampy’s house and the tall glad flowers are out. Some have fallen over and lie on the fence. My fingers smell of cigarettes. I rub them on my new shorts and I say, ‘Why?’ when she comes round to open the car door for me. ‘Why did we leave Honey behind? Why can’t she come to the christening too?’

    Auntie Jean slams the car door. She walks very fast down the drive to Grampy’s black front door. I say, ‘Wait for me,’ and run and scratch one of my shiny brown lace-ups on the crazy paving. There are ants running round my shoe. They come out of a crack.

    At the door I remember Honey tied up at home and say, ‘Why can’t Honey come too?’

    ‘Because,’ says Auntie Jean as she drops the keys into her handbag and snaps it shut, ‘your Father doesn’t like dogs.’

    Grampy’s house smells different to ours and today yellow light falls on the wall where the snake skin is hanging.

    ‘Why is Grampy’s hall a funny colour today?’

    The yellow light is the colour of the snake’s eyes in my animal picture book.

    ‘Dad?’ says Auntie Jean, looking down the hall for Grampy to come out of the kitchen. I look at my shoe to see if the crazy paving mark is still there. Auntie Jean is not saying anything back about the yellow light.

    Auntie Jean calls again, ‘Dad?’ and goes up the stairs. She says, ‘Stay there a minute, Andy, and don’t go and get yourself all mucky, I’ll just see where he’s got to.’

    I do not like the yellow light in the hall today, or the wooden bear with teeth or the snake skin from India and The War so I crawl on my tummy into the front room and there is Grampy sitting in his wing chair staring out of the window at people walking by. His hair is brushed over to one side like mine. He puts his hand over his eyes. He doesn’t want to see any more. Auntie Jean’s feet come down the stairs.

    Auntie Jean says, ‘Well, there you are, all ready for the off?’ from the doorway in the loud sing-song voice she uses for Grampy. She says, ‘I’ll just check the back door’s locked,’ and she goes into the kitchen. I climb on to Grampy’s lap. He doesn’t have his bluey green jumper on today, the one that Granny Clementine knitted him. Today he has a tie on like me and he smells of the soap in his bathroom. The one with the black-and-gold label I keep in my box. The label says something LEATHER.