The Song House (2 page)

Maggie splays her own fingers in the air between them.

Music is power, she says, her face serious.

Is it? he whispers, Who says so?

Richard Ashcroft. You’d put him in the rock section, she says,
and seeing Kenneth’s bewildered expression, she adds, Under
‘Gods’.

Kenneth grins with relief. He finds her intensity refreshing
after meeting the other candidates, with their laptops and their
assured manner, their dead eyes. And he likes it more that she
seems so interested in the task.

You won’t tease me about the rock section, he says, Will
you?

Ah. Let me guess.

She closes her eyes. He fixes on the pale bluish tint to her lids,
can’t concentrate on the list she’s reciting.

. . . The Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd, and – The Who.

Bill Haley. Elvis Presley. Eddie Cochran, he counters, Bruce
Springsteen.

Really? I didn’t know he recorded on 78s.

So she is teasing. He can easily go along with that.

Actually, I’m quite clued-up on the latest technology, the
pods and downloads and that. I like to keep abreast of these
things.

You have an iPod, she says, not even attempting to keep the
disbelief from her voice.

A birthday present. But those little headphones—

Buds.

They make my ears ache.

Maggie nods in agreement,

And they don’t do much for the sound. But they’re useful,
you know, for blocking out other people, their noise.

You’ll be listening to my noise. I hope you won’t mind that.
But at least it will be on vinyl. This here is the system, he says,
with a little introductory cough.

He opens the door of a sideboard to reveal a stack of silver
equipment, which they both stare at.

It’s all made by Linn. The best, apparently. Don’t tell him,
but I much prefer listening on this.

Kenneth pats the smoked-perspex lid of an ordinary-looking
record player.

Who should I not tell? Maggie asks.

My son, Will, he says, You’ll meet him. He sometimes pops
in.

He gives her a wry smile,

Not too often, he adds, And usually only to raid my wine
cellar, or try to sell me some dubious piece of art.

Maggie blinks at this, gesturing to the wall of records.

How many a day, do you think? she asks, Only, you said it
was a three-month contract.

It will depend, says Kenneth, On the day, on what I hear
first, on what I
feel
like hearing first and what I feel like hearing
next. A three-month contract, yes, possibly extended, all
depending on how we get on.

I’d like us to get on, she says, moving to a long glass-topped
display cabinet. She bends over it, using her hand to try to
block out the reflections on the surface.

We won’t be bothering with the sheet music, says Kenneth,
dismissive, Those in there, they’re relics. They used to have
singing lessons here.

They?

The children, he says. He wants to draw her away from the
cabinet, eager to make her understand. He’s decided she’s right
for him.

This is what we’ll do, Maggie, in here, in the mornings, in
silence – silence from you, that is. We’ll resurrect history, make
the past into a story. I mean, not invented but . . . personal. I’ll
sit there – he points to a wing-backed chair in a corner of the
room – And I’ll speak and you’ll transcribe and—

He stops himself, hearing how pompous he sounds, and ridiculous,
his breath coming quick and excited. But his belief that
she could help him, his sudden sense of needing her, pushes
him on again,

– And you don’t interrupt, you listen to the music and you
listen to me talk and you take it all down. Understood? And
in the afternoons, you type up the notes.

On a computer?

On a typewriter. There’s one in the prefect’s office, under
the main stairs.

The prefect’s office, she echoes, her eyes fixed on his face.

This place used to be a school.

Ah, the singing lessons, she says, Yes.

Not quite, he says, returning to the windows and closing
the shutters one by one, After we bought it – after the school
closed – the choir still came to practise here.

Must’ve been exquisite, she says, lifting her head as if to hear
the sound of their voices.

It wasn’t always
that
tuneful, he says, furrowing his eyebrows,
But it was only on Sundays, so we coped.

He watches her turn from him, and turn back again.

On Sundays, she says, Of course, the choir sang on a Sunday.
He’s not sure he’s understood her correctly, wonders if she’s
religious.

Do you have any more questions, Maggie?

The advert said ‘live in’, she says, So, where do I stay?

She doesn’t know where she is. The light has woken her, pale
green, tracing an unfamiliar pattern on the wall. Her body is
covered by a smooth tight sheet with the weight of the quilt
on top. She doesn’t know
who
she is. It’s a familiar feeling for
Maggie, this fleeting moment when she’s caught between the
waking and the dead. She’d been dreaming of her mother again.
Pushing one leg out across the bed, Maggie feels the coolness
of the cotton under her foot: she must have lain in this position
all night. The bed is high, like a princess’s bed: like the
princess and the pea, she thought, but didn’t say, when Kenneth
first showed her the room. A high bed with a thick floral-patterned
quilt and a mahogany headboard, and a dark wooden
wardrobe and bedside cupboard and, in the corner, a marble-topped
washstand. On top of it is a television set with a
dust-sticky remote control perched on the edge. Maggie thinks
it is a fine room. It smells amberous and heady, the scent of
baked summer. It is nothing like anywhere she knows, and that
is good. There’s the coo of a wood pigeon, a chatter of other
birdsong she can’t identify, a power saw off in the distance.
From the window, her view is of a cobbled courtyard, in
the middle of which stands a tree with massive, hand-shaped
leaves and a thick trunk. She looks at it for a time: there are
definitely eyes in the trunk. She doesn’t know the name of the
tree. She will ask Kenneth about it.

She arrived last night, just before dinner, as Kenneth had
instructed. They ate in the dining room. It had wall cabinets
full of fine china, plates with gold-leaf patterns on them, but
the crockery they ate from was just ordinary; plain and heavy.
He’s laid the table especially, she thought, looking at the candles
and place mats and napkin holders. She imagined him on
his own in this big house, eating a ready-meal at the end of
the long table, and the thought of it brought a tightness to
her chest. He served her pasta, vegetarian, because, he said,
he didn’t know if she was or wasn’t, and no one objects
to vegetables. He looked proud when he told her that he’d
cooked the meal himself, and made the sauce. It was a mixture
of tinned tomato, hard courgette chunks, chopped onion that
squeaked between her teeth. Kenneth was very different in this
role; slightly bashful and eager to please, and when he gave her
some wine, Maggie understood the effort involved: as he
poured, he placed his free hand on the base of the glass to
steady it.

Call me Kenneth, he said, No need for formalities, which
made her feel stiff and oddly angry, as if he were granting a
privilege to a servant. And you can call me Maggie, she replied,
which made them laugh, and easy again, because he had been
doing just that all along. Afterwards, he wanted to show her
around downstairs.

So if you get lost, you’ll know where you are, he said. He
pointed to a half-closed door,

Kitchen. Where I’ve just spent three hours concocting. And
where you will often find me concocting. I am, if I may say
so, an adventurous cook.

Maggie glimpsed a large rectangular space with a stove set into
a brick hearth.

And the dining room you’ve seen. I sometimes eat in there,
but quite often you’ll find me down here. C’mon.

He led her further along the corridor until they arrived at an
atrium, stuffed full of tall hothouse plants and wicker furniture.
Despite the hour, the heat was intense, trapped by the
blinds on the sloping glass roof. It reminded Maggie of a picture
in a catalogue, with its pamment flooring and French windows
leading onto the courtyard. There was a coffee table in the
centre with a wedge of magazines on it, shaped into a careful
fan. She couldn’t quite see Kenneth deliberating over which
type of conservatory blind would best complement the chintz,
but someone had definitely styled this space. They passed a
closed door with an engraved plate on it.

Music room, she said, reading it.

True, true, but it’s where I keep most of my books. The
library is oak-panelled, you see, with a coffered ceiling.

Maggie struggled to keep up with him.

A coffined—? she asked.

Coffered. Good for listening to music. So I switched them
about. The music room’s now my library, and the original
library is my music room.

And this is where the schoolchildren came to practise? asked
Maggie, perplexed.

What? No, no. It’s full of books! The main hall. They used
that.

The corridor grew narrow; Maggie had to walk behind him
to avoid bumping her elbow into his.

Don’t you find yourself rattling about in this place? she
asked, just as he came to an abrupt halt. They’d reached the
end of the tour, and were facing a painted white door.

I do, he said, Which is why I spend a lot of my time in here:
the den!

He opened the door onto a room saturated with colour; the
walls were maroon, the curtains midnight blue and covered
with golden stars and planets. Two brown leather armchairs
were placed either side of a marble fireplace, itself a repellent,
mottled purple.

It’s very . . . full, said Maggie, eyeing the books and papers
stacked up all over the floor. Kenneth smiled at her.

A full life is a wonderful life, don’t you agree, Maggie?
She wasn’t about to contradict him. Instead, she pretended to
study the gallery of paintings stretched along one wall: a stag
in oils, a stern-faced portrait of a man in a dog collar, a ruin
in a garden.

Lots of stuff, she said, moving on to the collection of clocks
on the mantelpiece. Each one told a slightly different time: ten
past, twelve minutes past, a quarter past. Closer, she could hear
their panicky ticking. Her eyes fell to rest on a large glass orb
housed in a tubular frame. It looked modern, out of place. As
Maggie approached, she was able to separate it from the background.
It was an aquarium, swirling with brightly coloured
fish.

That, said Kenneth, pointing, Is not my idea. It’s a work of
art, apparently. But it has a
function
. The fish are intended to
keep me active.

Active how? It’s not as if you can take them for a walk.

As she ducked forward to watch them more closely, the neons
flashed away to the far side of the globe.

I’m supposed to remember to feed them, you see, otherwise
the little beggars die.

Well, it seems to be working, said Maggie, straightening up
again, They look healthy enough.

He drew closer, suddenly serious.

You don’t think it’s cruel? he asked.

Maggie shrugged,

No more cruel than eating them, she said, Perhaps that’s the
way to go. Fried in batter, like whitebait.

Kenneth bent his head and put his hands on either side of the
globe. He looked like a fortune-teller about to reveal her
future.

When they die, they float to the top, he said, I find it quite
sad. Like they say, the water gives up her dead.

The sea, corrected Maggie, I think it’s from the Bible.

I found a man once, he said, still staring into the bowl,
Drowned. Well, I didn’t find him myself, but I saw him. What
remained. He’d been washed up after a storm. Baggs, his name
was. Huge man, lived in one of the estate cottages. It’s an awful
thing, the smell. You never forget it.

Maggie turned away from him. She didn’t want this conversation
any more, didn’t like the way it had cast a shadow on
the room.

These are just little fish, Kenneth, she said, And if you really
don’t want them, why don’t you advertise them for sale? Or
donate them to the local school? Or you could sell them to
the pet shop at the retail park. That’s probably where they came
from in the first place.

Can’t. Will bought them. One of his less brilliant gifts. You
see, Maggie, that’s what happens, as you get on. You acquire
stuff you don’t want. People give you all sorts of rubbish, football-shaped radios, painted china kingfishers, a stacking rooster
teapot— he was in full flow now, sweeping his arm across the
array of objects on the shelves – A tartanware bloody decanter!
His face had gone very pink. Maggie tried not to laugh at him.

Show me the worst thing, she said, offering her palm.

Kenneth rummaged on the shelves, brought down a black mug
with the Playboy logo etched in gold, and passed it to her. She
weighed it in her hand, held it out at arm’s length.

You really hate it, she said, her eyes glittering.

Yes I do.

She took it over to the hearth and let it drop.

Whoops, she said, glancing down at the broken pieces, I’m
so clumsy. Any more?

Kenneth thought for a second, then fetched an ornate round
dish with a transfer image of Frankie Dettori on the front.

Present from a lady friend, he said.

She gave you a
plate
with a
jockey
on it? said Maggie, astonished,
And now she’s in a home, yes?

Kenneth’s laugh turned into a coughing fit. He wiped his tears
on his sleeve as Maggie waited.

Ali’s – well – she’s in a stable, so to speak. Lambourn. It’s a
village not far from here. Full of horsey types. Breeders, trainers
. . .

Plate-givers, finished Maggie.