The Devil's Music Read online

  Honeysuckle, damp after the rain, scents the dusk. Of course your father won’t be in the house, he’ll be in the greenhouse. You hurry down the side passage, past the open back door and down the narrow garden path between the glossy hebe bushes, where your pace slows because the masses of purple flowers are so fragrant tonight that the desire to stand still and breathe their perfume into your body is almost overwhelming. But you make yourself keep going, following the narrow path down between the apple trees towards the old greenhouse.

  As you approach, although it is almost dark, you see them together in the greenhouse: your father, dishevelled, a trowel held loosely in one hand, leaning against the wide shelves he has built for his seedling trays as he looks down at Michael, who sits on an upturned box, his back to you. Everything about the contours of Michael’s body – his shoulders, his head, his hands – is limp and bowed. Neither of them seems to be talking. The intimacy of the scene is so unexpected it brings you to a halt, one hand resting on the rough concrete edge of the ugly birdbath your mother bought when they first moved to this house. The words on the pedestal – ‘You are nearer God’s heart in a garden, Than anywhere else on Earth’ – you’ve always considered trite and sentimental but now, in this moment, you almost feel the weight of meaning they might carry.

  You step forward; they both hear your footfall and turn. Michael gets to his feet abruptly, hesitates at the greenhouse door and then strides off further down the garden towards the raspberry canes. For a moment his shirt is white against the dusk, before he disappears from sight.

  In the greenhouse, you perch on the upturned box Michael has just left. His tie lies on the ground at your feet. You bury your face in your hands. Your father moves away down the greenhouse. There’s the slosh of water in the watering can, the fine spray of water on leaves.

  After a while his footsteps come close again, and his hand is on your shoulder. ‘This home in Sussex, have you paid a visit? Had a look? Michael says they specialise in caring for children like Elaine.’

  ‘Children like Elaine?’

  Anger tightens your throat again. It’s the word ‘home’. Your father is as bad as Michael, can hardly bear to look at her. His mother, your grandmother, a country midwife in Yorkshire, told him stories, stories that he repeated to you recently, of babies born and put straight on to the fire, ‘For the best’, because they were deformed. You’d stared at him, horrified. ‘But Dad, Elaine’s not deformed,’ you’d shouted. ‘Look at her, Dad. Look!’ Pulling him over to the rug where Elaine lay, her wisteria-blue eyes staring up at the ceiling. ‘She’s perfect! Physically, she’s perfect!’

  You swallow and look down at Michael’s discarded tie. ‘Some of them in that place are monsters, Dad. One little boy crouches under the table and growls like a dog. He bites too.’

  ‘Well,’ he takes his hand from your shoulder, ‘there’s others in the family you need to look to, duck. She’s using you all up.’

  You think of Houdini and the straitjacket picture and feel your father should be taking some of the blame for what has happened tonight, not handing out advice.

  ‘Dad –’

  ‘Andy talks to me, duck. He imagines things. He needs more of you. And Michael ...’ He turns away to the tap and begins to refill the watering can.

  ‘And Michael?’ you prompt.

  ‘Michael is beside himself with worry.’

  ‘What’s he said?’

  ‘Well,’ he pauses to fiddle with the sprinkler rose on the spout of the watering can.

  ‘Well what, Dad?’

  ‘He seems to think Andy’s reacting in an extreme way to ...’

  ‘Did Michael tell you how he himself reacted?’

  ‘Perhaps if it’s just a temporary arrangement that you make,’ he seems not to have heard, ‘for Elaine. Just to see how things go.’

  Exasperated, you stand up, but something about your father’s patient expression as he waits for you to respond to what he has said cuts through the tension in your chest and it’s as though you’re letting go of something, because perhaps he’s right after all, perhaps everyone else is right after all and there’s no point fighting the inevitable any longer. You’re failing.

  He bends to examine a tray of cornflowers, tweaks out a spindly seedling and drops it on to the shelf. He runs his fingers lightly over the tops of the silvery-green leaves and pinches out another stunted plant. Lying on the rough wood, the tiny discarded seedlings appear to wither almost immediately.

  Michael’s sudden movement at the greenhouse door makes you jump.

  ‘There’s a robin caught,’ he pants, not quite looking at you, ‘just flown into the nets. I need some scissors.’

  Your father holds up a Stanley knife. ‘Shall I do it?’

  Michael shakes his head. ‘I’ll have a go.’

  As a child you hated the yards of black netting that shrouded your father’s precious raspberry canes. Leaning out of your bedroom window, you could see the dark swathes of it at the bottom of the garden. You’d hear the flap and squawk of a trapped bird and hurtle downstairs, screeching for your father. Once, sent to pick raspberries for supper, you’d lifted aside the net to find a dead blackbird tangled close to your hand, its claws curled, the one visible eye a slit.

  You follow Michael down the garden. The bird is hanging, twisted, an exhausted bundle in the netting. As the two of you approach, it struggles in panic and the black thread digs deeper into the feathers at its neck. Murmuring, Michael wraps one hand around the bird, firmly enfolding its wings against its body, but the robin strains its head in terror, beak open. You see the stiff tongue moving, making no sound. Michael hands you the Stanley knife and carefully lifts the thread from the bird’s neck for you to cut through. The wings are not too badly tangled, but nevertheless Michael has to use his other hand to gently lift and spread the wing for you to be able to cut the thread underneath. Once it’s free, the robin almost falls from Michael’s hand and flutters down to the ground, hunched and wary, under the laurel hedge.

  Moving slowly, you wander together back to the greenhouse. The kitchen light is on now and your father is moving about inside.

  In the greenhouse, Michael picks up his tie and takes one of your hands in both of his. ‘I don’t know what to do.’ He sighs. You have never seen Michael like this, at a loss. ‘Perhaps we all just need some breathing space.’

  You recall the dusky fragrance of earlier and inhale, but the greenhouse air is too warm and damp, heavy with the cloying smell of soil.

  Taking your hand from his, you move to the open door, your back to him. ‘I don’t know what I think any more.’

  ‘You could take the children down to The Siding for a week or two, before we decide. Give yourself some time. Perhaps Jean could keep you company?’

  You hold your upper arms and rub them, though you are not cold. There’s no escaping this decision, much as your mind shies away from choosing. Endless postponement is no answer; everything and everyone is in limbo. If only there was someone who could tell you, with conviction, what to do. Like the Ward Sister at St Mary’s. Although she was a tyrant, she knew how to tell people what to do. Once, during visiting hours, she made you clean and oil the castors of the beds. Another time she called you back just as you were going off duty after a night shift, so tired you could hardly put one foot in front of the other. Your feet throbbed. She picked up a dirty hypodermic syringe and showed you how to sterilise the barrel, ready for the precious penicillin. Then she left you to it. Your hand shook as you reached for the first stainless-steel syringe from the pile on the tray, but you drew the boiling oil up, slowly, into the barrel. It was dawn by the time you’d finished, a neat row of sterilised syringes on the trolley.

  ‘About Elaine ...’ you say, finally.

  ‘It’s hard,’ Michael interrupts. ‘No one is any good at making difficult decisions.’

  Your father’s shovel is stuck into the yellowing grass and rotting stems of the compost heap. You imagine the
heat generated by the decomposition deep inside. If you go to The Siding for a couple of weeks, as Michael has suggested, by the time you return, Ian will have finished the redecoration in the dining room. He will have gone.

  ‘But,’ your voice is firm, disembodied, ‘yes, I’ll take them to The Siding – before we make any final decisions. Andrew loves it there. We all do.’

  Chapter 9

  In Sarah’s bed, much later, I’m battling to wake. My ears buzz. Every slip into unconsciousness holds me under a white-water blur of images: slanting, high, barred windows; the snarl of lions’ head knockers. Limbs like treacle, I gasp for air against the drag of undertow. Elaine’s porcelain skin, her unblinking eyes, clouded like the prize marble I once had.

  Finally I surface properly, fighting with the duvet, exhausted. Sarah sleeps on undisturbed, arms flung out across the pillows. I slip out of bed without waking her.

  Back at The Siding, chill moonlight lights the curve of the ceiling, the splintery wooden walls, the criss-crossed rope shelves in my Pullman carriage bedroom. My feet and shins tangle with the metal bar across the foot end of the narrow child’s bed. Thunder rumbles in the distance as the storm moves along the coast. Although sleep seems unlikely, I plummet into another nightmare. I’m trapped in the wardrobe in my parents’ bedroom. Hanging furs caress my face. Jerking awake again, heart flipping, I throw open the sleeping bag and curse the wine. Too jittery to remain horizontal, I get up, make coffee and take it outside. Shingle glistens in the moonlight, but it’s stopped raining. I sit on the veranda’s edge, hunched into the sleeping bag, and sip strong black coffee. Every now and then, I get up to make more, grateful that the electricity has returned. The hammock now hangs between two concrete pillars of the veranda. I could bundle myself into it but I don’t want to fall back into sleep. Images from my dreams crackle with energy.

  At last it gets lighter. I guess it must be after seven now. The sky is white, becoming bluer in the east as the sun rises. No clouds. No rain. The sea spinach smells strong today, salt-burned in the gales. My teeth clunk on the mug – there’s a tremor in my hands. I’m not sure how much of Sarah’s Shiraz I drank last night on an empty stomach. I drain my coffee and get to my feet: time to do something.

  The length of worn shroud-laid rope from the shed is on the floor by the sofa. Yesterday I cut away a couple of the damaged areas. The rope looks as though it may have spent some time in the sea, so it seems appropriate to use the kind of multi-strand bend sailors used in the past to make emergency repairs to hemp rigging: French Shroud Knots to join the fragments. I’ll finish off with grafting to make a strong, handsome finish.

  Most of the equipment I need is in my rucksack. I spread it all out on the table. Rigger’s knife, long-billed pliers, packing needles, flexible wire needles, twine, black thread, beeswax, pantograph, tracing paper. I begin by seizing and opening the two rope ends. Marrying them together, I hold the structure vertically and wall the upstanding set of ends to the right. Turn the whole thing end for end and wall the new upper ends. Finally, I draw it snug.

  But it’s no good. My mind whirs, my hands shake. I need to get outside.

  The window glass is covered with salt and what look like tiny strands of plant debris. I can barely make out the shingle banks beyond. Salt crystals stuck on the glass glitter in the sun. Behind them, blue sky. I have seen so little of it recently. Today the blue is partially hidden by the overhang of the veranda where a section hangs down, rotten. Loose felt flaps in the breeze.

  I get the rickety kitchen chair. It wobbles, might cave in under my weight, but I can reach the rotten plywood. One wrench; a crack. The wood falls lower. The axe from the coal bunker will do it.

  A few blows. Felt rips, plywood splinters. Soon, most of the veranda roof lies on the ground below. Above me arches the elation of a scoop of blue. That colour. In Crete, blue is everywhere. Snatches of sky pulled down into everyday life. Blue railings on the terraces of tavernas and spills of blue paint on the uneven paving; faded blue-and-white check tablecloths; a blue jug filled with Vasilis’s home-made wine; blue doors and window frames against whitewashed walls.

  No clouds. The sky is empty of motion. I want movement. We had a painting when I was a child. It hung halfway up the stairs. A square-rigged ship, sails billowing in a storm-tossed ocean under swollen skies. It’s that suggestion of time and distance I need; sails against sky. Canvas – the old tent. I’ll rip it up. Hang some strips of canvas. Maybe use the rope once the Shroud Knots are grafted. Work some pairs of Star Knots, perhaps a solid sinnet too. Back in Crete, that’s what I’d planned, to try Ashley’s sixty-one-strand pentalpha. I’ll need the pantograph. The pentalpha is a complex sinnet, star-shaped in cross section. Perfect, if I can do it. A bit of research and preparation is required. I’ll need Ashley’s instructions and diagrams.

  I carry the kitchen chair back inside.

  First, some sort of table will be necessary to hold the strands in place as I work. The old washing basket in the shed – I could use the circular base of that, the wicker’s rotten anyway. There must be a broomstick I can use for legs, some inch brads or nails somewhere.

  I rummage about in the shed. In the far corner, I glimpse a metal frame with wheels. A carrycot. Elaine’s carrycot. What the bloody hell’s that doing here? Somebody has loaded it with chunks of driftwood. The hardboard shows through rips in the plastic covering. I lurch through the piles of junk. Get that wood out, I hear someone mutter, GET THAT BLOODY WOOD OUT!

  Chapter 10

  Jelly makes a sighing noise, a little whimper, like Honey when she wants to go for a walk.

  ‘They’ll be back soon, Jelly. Don’t be sad.’

  I shiggle her carrycot to make the eebie jeebies go away.

  The sea’s right out, thin and flat. No one else on the sand but me and Jelly and Honey on the edge of the pebbles, and a man digging for lugworms a long way away. When Mummy and Susie come back with the ice creams, I’m going to make an enormous sandcastle with my new spade.

  I’m leaving you in charge, Andrew, Mummy said, holding Susie’s hand.

  Honey chomps and slobbers on a bit of wood. She’s wet, the fur on her legs and on her tummy all dark and stuck together like little feathers. She’s got her head on one side, chewing, the piece of wood pushed right up into the corner of her mouth, her black lips stretching back to show her gums. Her teeth are long and pointy.

  Jelly’s whining gets louder. She wriggles on her back as if she’s itchy. Her head’s right at the top and her feet are right at the bottom of the carrycot. She’s much too big and fat for it. Even though she’s four, she hasn’t stopped being a baby. She cries a lot.

  When I was nearly four, Susie was born and I helped Mummy with things like passing Johnson’s Baby Powder and lining up the cotton buds. I wonder if Jelly will always be a baby and what it will be like when she’s the same size as a grown-up and I have to call her Elaine, her real name.

  I lie on my back to see the same as she sees. Wind blows white bits of cloud across the sky. I practise my whistling. Grampy says whistling is the Devil’s music. It might call up a storm or a death by drowning.

  Jelly has stopped wriggling. I blow some spit bubbles for her, but she’s not watching. ‘Now, Jelly,’ I lean right over her, my shadow big and dark, ‘I’ve made you a pool and now I’m going to make drip people next to it. Or shall I write your name in the sand?’

  We talk to Jelly in questions, same as when we say to Honey, do you want to Fetch? And Honey fetches her special tennis ball with no fur left. Or, do you want a choccy-drop? And she stands by the larder door.

  I put a finger on the place where Jelly’s neck joins her chest and stroke the little dip there. Her skin is soft and white. I whisper my question right into her ear, ‘Which would you like, Jelly?’

  Her head goes from side to side. She’s staring at the tassels on the carrycot canopy. I take a deep breath in and blow them, puffing out my cheeks like the wind.

  Mummy
and Susie are a very long time.

  Honey stops chomping. She drops her stick on the pebbles and nudges it, looking sideways at me. Then she sniffs at the stick, wrinkling up her nose to show her teeth. She gives one bark.

  I know what she wants, but I’m pretending I don’t.

  Honey jumps up, brings her stick over and drops it on the pebbles by my feet. Her nose touches my ankle. Wind blows, cold on the wetness. She looks at the stick; me; the stick. Her eyebrows twitch.

  I pick up a pebble and roll it in my hand. I watch the lugworm man digging his hole.

  Honey pushes at my arm with her nose, her pink tongue curling out to give me a lick. She rests her chin on me and looks sad. I put my arms around her and rub her seaweedy fur. On the top of her head where the fur is thin, I can feel her skull.

  Suddenly she’s up. She leaps around her stick, crouching down and bouncing up, pebbles flying everywhere. The stick’s all slimy with slobber when I grab it and run, run on to the hard sand. Honey – chasing, crazy – overtakes me, her body curled like a ball, a bundle of legs, as she gallops towards the sea, skids around and comes back. Another skid and sand sprays up as she turns and gallops off again, her ears blown inside out by the wind.

  I fling the stick as hard as I can. Honey races past the man’s lugworm bucket. He stops digging and watches the sand fly. He holds a hand above his eyes to look at me, then at Elaine’s carrycot on the edge of the pebbles.

  I go back.

  Jelly’s eyes are closed now, her mouth open. She’s not all there, Andrew. I put my face right down to hers, but all I can smell is the hot plastic of the sides of the carrycot.

  I don’t like strangers looking at Jelly.