The Other Family (22 page)

She lifted it out. You didn’t get proper, printed, published song sheets like that any more. Everything was virtual, digitalized, ephemeral. You couldn’t hold a song in your hands, not unless it was by Sondheim or someone and worth publishing in huge numbers. But Richie’s songs, in the early days, came out as sheets at the same time that they came out as records. In that carton lay something that was far more valuable to Margaret than the copyright, which was a stack of these battered paper copies, all the songs that Richie had
written in the golden decade before he’d believed – Margaret would never say ‘been persuaded’: it took two to tango, every time – that going to London would fire him off into some career stratosphere. Those years, the Tynemouth houses, Scott’s school success, had produced songs that were right for Richie and, crucially, right for their times. And those songs lay, in their faded physical form, on her sitting-room carpet. It wasn’t a carpet Richie had ever trodden on – he had never been to Percy Gardens – but the furniture mostly dated from their time together, and the songs were the essence of those times.

‘You might have liked him,’ Margaret said to Dawson. ‘Except he wouldn’t have liked you much. He preferred dogs to cats.’

Dawson yawned.

‘It’s something to leave behind, isn’t it, a box of songs? It’s quite something. It’s more than I’ll do. It’s certainly more than you’ll do. Though I expect I’ll get a little pang when I pass your dish on the floor, after you’ve gone.’

Dawson closed his eyes. Margaret closed hers too, and sang the first lines of ‘Chase The Dream’.

‘“When the clouds gather, when the day darkens, when hope’s small candle flickers and dies—”’

Dawson flattened his little ears. Margaret opened her eyes.

‘“That’s when I want you, that’s when I need you, that’s when I find the dream in your eyes.”’ She stopped. She said to Dawson, ‘Bit soppy for you?’ She looked down at the sheet in her hand. ‘Never too soppy for me. I can picture him writing it, picking out the melody with his left hand and singing snatches of the words and scribbling them down. It was lovely. They were lovely times. You must be very careful, you know, not to let good memories get poisoned by what comes later.’

She put the song sheet back in the carton and got stiffly to her feet. Better not to remember what those months and years had been like, after Richie left. Better not to recall how desperate she had been, both emotionally and practically, how unreachable poor Scott had been, mute with rage and misery, and twitching himself away from her hands. Better, always, to focus on what saved you, saved you from bitterness and nothingness. She glanced at Dawson.

‘We’ll have some nice times, with those songs. I’ll sing and you can turn your back on me, and then we’ll both be happy. I just hope the piano makes Scott a bit happy too, poor boy.’

Scott had asked Margaret to come and see the piano
in situ
. She had bought champagne to take with her and, for some reason which wasn’t quite clear to her although the impulse had been strong, flowers. She knew she couldn’t put flowers on the piano – Richie had been adamant that nothing should ever, ever be put on the piano – but they could sit on the windowsill near by, and lend an air of celebration as well as compensating for the fact that Scott seemed to feel no need for either blinds or curtains.

She’d gone up in the lift of the Clavering Building with an armful of flowers and the champagne ready-chilled in an insulated bag, and Scott had been on the landing to meet her, looking animated and more than respectable in the trousers from his work suit and a white shirt open at the neck. He’d stepped forward, smiling but not saying anything, and he’d kissed her, and taken the champagne and the flowers, and then he’d gone ahead of her into the flat and just stood there, beaming, so that she could look past him and see the Steinway, shining and solid, sitting there with the view beyond it as if it had never been away.

‘Oh, pet,’ Margaret said.

‘It looks fine,’ Scott said, ‘doesn’t it?’

She nodded.

‘It looks—’ She stopped. Then she said, ‘Have you played it?’

‘Oh yes. It needs a tune, after the journey. But I’ve played it all right.’

Margaret moved down the room.

‘What have you played?’

‘Bit of Cole Porter. Bit of Sondheim. Bit of Chopin—’

Margaret stopped in front of the piano.

‘Chopin? That’s ambitious—’

‘I didn’t,’ Scott said, grinning, ‘I didn’t say I played it well—’

He put the flowers down on the kitchen worktop. He lifted the insulated bag.

‘I guess this is champagne?’

‘Laurent-Perrier,’ Margaret said.

‘Wow—’

‘Well, if it’s good enough for Bernie Harrison, it’s good enough for a Steinway, wouldn’t you say?’

‘Our Steinway.’

Margaret sat down gingerly on the piano stool.

‘
Your
Steinway, pet.’

Scott extricated the bottle from the bag.

‘I even have champagne flutes.’

‘Impressive—’

‘They came free with something.’

Margaret put a finger lightly on a white key.

‘I’m getting the shivers—’

‘Good shivers?’ Scott said. He was almost laughing, twisting the cork out of the bottle and letting the champagne foam out and down the sides, over his hand.

‘Just shivers,’ Margaret said, ‘just echoes. Just the past jumping up again like it wasn’t over.’

Scott poured champagne into his flutes. He carried them down the room to the piano.

‘Don’t put them down!’ Margaret said sharply.

‘Wouldn’t dream of it,’ Scott said. He handed her a glass. ‘What shall we toast?’

Margaret looked doubtful.

‘Dad?’ Scott said.

‘Don’t think so, pet.’

‘Us? Each other?’

Margaret eyed him.

‘That wouldn’t suit us either, dear.’

‘OK,’ Scott said, ‘the piano itself, music, the future—’

Margaret gave a little snort.

‘Don’t get carried away—’

‘I feel carried away. I am carried away. I want to be carried away.’

Margaret looked up at him. She took a sip of her champagne without toasting anything.

She said, ‘Talking of carried, who paid for the carriage? Who paid for this to come up here?’

Scott hesitated. He looked fixedly at his drink. Then he said, ‘I did.’

There was a silence. Margaret looked at him steadily. She took another sip of her drink.

‘Why did you do that?’

‘I wanted to,’ Scott said. ‘I needed to.’

‘How did you arrange it?’

‘Doesn’t matter.’

‘Who did you speak to?’

‘Mam,’ Scott said, ‘it doesn’t matter. It’s done, it’s sorted and I’ve got the piano. I couldn’t bear to be obliged to them.’

‘No,’ Margaret said, ‘I see that.’ She paused, and then she said quietly, ‘I wonder how it was, for her, when it went.’

Scott moved round behind the piano and leaned against the windowsill, his back to the view.

He said, ‘She wasn’t there.’

Margaret looked up sharply.

‘What?’

‘ She wasn’t there. It went while she was out. They arranged it that way on purpose. She’d gone out with a friend.’

‘How do you know all this?’

Scott took a big swallow of champagne.

‘Amy told me.’

‘Amy—’

‘I rang her.’

‘Again? ’

‘Yes,’ Scott said, ‘I rang her to check she was OK about the piano, that she didn’t think I was party to some kind of plot. I rang her to say I wanted to pay for the carriage.’ He grinned at his drink. ‘She said she thought they’d expect me to do that anyway.’

Margaret gave a second small snort.

‘She said she hoped I’d really play it,’ Scott said. ‘She said she hoped it’d bring me luck. She said—’ Scott stopped.

Margaret waited, holding her glass, the finger of her other hand still lightly poised on the piano key.

‘What?’

‘She said,’ Scott said with emphasis, ‘she said that one day she hoped she’d hear me play it. She wants, one day, to hear me play the piano. She said so.’

Margaret’s finger went down on the middle C.

‘And,’ Scott said, ‘I told her I hoped so too. I told her I’d like her to hear me play. I’d like it.’

‘I see.’

Scott put his champagne glass down on the windowsill.

‘Move over,’ he said to his mother.

‘What?’

‘Move over,’ Scott said. ‘Make room for me.’

‘What are you doing—’

‘I’m going to play,’ Scott said. ‘I’m going to play Dad’s piano and you’re going to listen to me.’

Margaret moved to the right-hand edge of the piano stool. She felt as she used to feel at the beginning of one of Richie’s concerts.

‘What are you going to play?’

Scott settled himself. She watched him flex his right foot above the pedals, settle his hands lightly on the keys.

‘Gershwin,’ he said, ‘“Rhapsody In Blue”. And you can cry if you want to.’

Margaret’s throat was full.

‘Wouldn’t dream of it,’ she said.

The door of Richie’s practice room was shut. While he was alive, it had never been completely closed except on very rare occasions, because he liked to feel that his playing belonged to all of them, to the whole house; so much so that Chrissie had had to organize insulation for the party wall with the neighbouring house, and have ugly soundproofing tiles fixed to the ceiling. But now the door was firmly shut so that none of them, Chrissie said, would have to see the sharp dents in the carpet where the little wheels on the piano’s legs had dug almost through to the canvas.

‘It’s worse than his shoes,’ Chrissie said.

There was a silence when she said this. All the girls felt a different kind of relief once the piano had gone, but it wasn’t, plainly, going to be possible to admit to it. Tamsin felt relieved because she might now be able to implement a few plans for the future; Dilly felt relieved because her own part in an alarming plot was over, and Amy felt relieved that justice had been done, and the piano was at last where it was supposed to be.

‘I wouldn’t expect,’ Chrissie said, ‘any of you to feel like I do.’

When she had come home, after her expedition with Sue, which had produced nothing except an abortive conversation about what work avenues Chrissie might explore next, she had found Tamsin and Dilly waiting tensely in the kitchen with the kettle on, and the corkscrew ready (which would she be in the mood for?) and Amy sitting cross-legged on the empty space of dented carpet where the piano had once been.

‘I didn’t want,’ Amy had said unhappily, ‘for there to be nothing here when you came back.’

Chrissie had been quite silent. She stood in the doorway of the practice room holding her bag and her keys, and she looked at Amy, and then she looked all round the room, very slowly, as if she was checking to see what else was missing, and then she said, ‘Did Sue know too?’

Amy nodded.

‘Get up,’ Chrissie said.

Amy got to her feet. Chrissie stepped forward and took her arm and pulled her out into the hall. Then she closed the door of the practice room, and propelled Amy down the hall to the kitchen.

Tamsin and Dilly were both there, both standing. Even Tamsin looked slightly scared. She opened her mouth to say, ‘Glass of wine, Mum?’ but nothing happened.

Chrissie let go of Amy and put her bag and her keys on the table. Then she said, ‘I suppose this is the same impulse that makes you want me to clear out his clothes.’

‘We want to
help
,’ Tamsin said bravely.

‘Yourselves, maybe,’ Chrissie said. She sounded bitter.

Dilly said, on a wail, ‘I didn’t want it to go!’

‘You can’t do someone’s grieving for them,’ Chrissie said.
‘You can’t move someone on at the pace that suits you, not them.’

Amy cleared her throat. She said, ‘But if we’re going to live together, we count as much as you do. We can’t be held back just because you won’t move on.’

Tamsin gave a little gasp. Chrissie looked at Amy.

‘Is that how you see it?’

‘It’s how it is,’ Amy said. ‘I knew you’d take it hard, that’s why I sat there. But you could think why we did it, you could try and think sometimes.’

‘You have a nerve,’ Chrissie said.

Amy said rudely, ‘Someone needs nerve round here.’

Chrissie stepped forward with sudden speed, reached out, and slapped her. She used her right hand, and the big ring she was wearing on her third finger caught Amy’s cheekbone and left an instant small welt, a little scarlet bar under Amy’s left eye. Then Chrissie burst into tears.

Nobody moved. There was a singing silence except for Chrissie’s crying. Then Tamsin darted forward and pushed Amy down the kitchen to the sink and turned the cold tap on.

‘Ice is better,’ Dilly said faintly. She moved towards the fridge and then Chrissie sprang after her, pushing her out of the way, and clawing to get ice cubes. She ran unsteadily, still sobbing and sniffing, down the kitchen, bundling ice cubes clumsily into a disposable cloth. She held it unsteadily against Amy’s face.

‘Sorry, oh sorry, so sorry, darling, so—’

‘It’s OK,’ Amy said. She stared ahead, not at her mother.

‘It’s a big deal, the piano,’ Tamsin said. She still had an arm round Amy. Amy took the bundle of ice cubes in her own hand, and pressed it to her cheekbone.

‘I should never—’ Chrissie said, ‘I’m so sorry, I’m—’

‘We shouldn’t have done it!’ Dilly cried.

Tamsin glared at her.

‘Sue—’ Dilly said.

‘Don’t blame Sue,’ Chrissie said. She drooped against the kitchen unit. ‘Don’t blame anyone.’

‘It was Kevin’s idea,’ Tamsin said.

‘What would he know—’

Nobody reacted. Chrissie gave a huge sigh and tore off a length of kitchen paper to blow her nose.

‘So it’ll be another bill—’

‘No,’ Amy said. She was still staring ahead, holding the ice cubes to her face. ‘No, no bill. He paid for it.’

Chrissie didn’t look at her.

‘I won’t ask how you know.’

Amy removed herself from Tamsin’s arm.

‘I’m going up to my room.’

Chrissie said, ‘I’ll find you some arnica.’

‘I don’t want any arnica.’

‘Amy,
please
, let me—’