The Devil's Music Read online

  Ian opens an old Roses’ chocolate tin and cuts a slice of something to put on to a saucer. ‘A wee slice of my mother’s Cut-and-Come-Again?’ he asks, and licks the crumbs from his thumb. ‘You’re awfy peely-wally.’

  The confusion must show on your face because he throws back his head and laughs, revealing those splintery hairs on his neck.

  ‘Peaky. In need o feeding up.’

  Michael has complained about the weight falling from you.

  Ian lays a hand on yours, briefly, casually, comforting as if you’re a child, as if it’s the most natural thing in the world for him to touch you. And why isn’t it? Why are you always so reined in?

  One day in the summer, while he was still working in the dining room, Ian was eating flapjack in the kitchen when Michael came in through the open back door and you’d leapt up, guiltily clattering together another cup and saucer, breathless. Ian sat unperturbed, his legs splayed under the table, a toe poking through a hole in one of his socks. Michael would notice that.

  ‘Looking after you, is she?’ Michael said, hanging up his linen jacket.

  ‘Guid baking.’ Ian held up the half-eaten square of flapjack, glistening and syrupy. You’d been able to relax. Michael knew Ian – of course – because of the passing days alone with him, the shared conversations, you’d forgotten Michael knew his parents, had given Ian the decorating job because he needed the money.

  Ian is turned away again now, cutting a second slice of cake, his back to you. ‘Whit about the bairns?’ he asks.

  The children. You lift your hands to your face. Perhaps, after all, he hasn’t heard.

  You lower your hands again, observe them clasped together in your lap, your fingers twisting at your rings. ‘Andy’s missed you.’

  You can’t say her name just yet. You must steer the conversation, a skill you acquired while nursing. ‘How’s Jamie?’ Your voice sounds level.

  ‘I’m away to pay him a visit just now. I promised the park, though wi the fog we’ll mebbe take tea instead. Wanny come?’

  Take tea. Cosy, familiar, afternoon tea. Of course you must say no. Your sandwiches and thermos are on the passenger seat of the Morris, ready for the long drive ahead. Jean is picking the children up from school and giving them tea, as she does every Wednesday.

  ‘Yes. Please.’ You can’t look him in the eye. ‘I’d love to. Thank you.’

  You walk beside Ian and Jamie, hands deep in your pockets. Wet leaves fall and stick to the pavement. Perhaps if you asked to push Jamie’s wheelchair, the effort, the weight of it, would be something, your hands holding on to the rubber handles. Perhaps it would warm you just a little. Instead, you tighten your upper arms, elbows, against your body. Through the layers of cloth, your own muscles and limbs press against your breasts and the empty cage of your ribs.

  The tearooms are steamy, filled with an aroma of toasted muffins and the clatter of china. The waitress, who’s wearing a plain dark dress with a white apron, greets Ian with a shy smile and gives Jamie a kiss on the cheek.

  ‘And how are we today, Jamie?’ she says, crouching down to take hold of one of his hands in both of hers.

  Without any fussing, a table is moved to one side to make room for the wheelchair. Ian angles Jamie into a corner because, as Ian explains, Jamie likes to watch everyone else. Ian pulls up a chair beside him. You sit opposite, with your back to the bustling tearoom and its ebb and flow of voices.

  The waitress brings a teapot under a knitted cosy, teacups and saucers, plates, bone-handled side knives and silver cake forks. There’s a jug of cream, a bowl of raspberry jam and a pile of warm scones. Ian helps Jamie, pours him tea, cuts up his food and feeds him, murmuring to him all the time. Something about their two heads bent together – Ian’s head of cropped curls and Jamie’s patchy wisps of hair – reminds you of Andy and Elaine, the way Andy liked to talk to her constantly, in a private undertone, lips brushing her ear.

  Ian and Jamie wolf down the food. You manage a morsel of scone and jam, washing it down with the strong, aromatic tea. On the wall above their heads are hunting scenes and watercolours of roses; some horse brasses. A fire crackles somewhere on the other side of the room, behind you.

  Ian pulls a notebook from his jacket pocket to show Jamie, then you, some pencil sketches he’s done of the river, the houseboats, the bridge at Henley. You nod and smile. Your brain is capable only of observing and labelling, thinking nothing.

  Stepping out of the teashop into the swirl of fog, you sniff and rub your hands together.

  ‘Cauld?’ Ian says, looking up from Jamie.

  You shake your head and force a smile, but he’s already tugging a tartan scarf from under his sheepskin jacket and he comes close, lifting the scarf as if to wrap it round your neck. You jerk your head back, away. There’s an awkward moment as you look, startled, into each other’s eyes.

  You reach out to take the scarf from him.

  ‘Thank you.’

  The wool is scratchy on the back of your neck and under your chin so you tuck your head down, rubbing, wanting the burn of soreness, burying your mouth in the remnants of his warmth and the smell of his boat, a mix of damp canvas and turps. You put out a hand to feel Jamie’s blanket, to see how thick it is. There are two blankets, the heavy rug with a softer nylon one underneath.

  ‘Mither will have put the woollen stockings on him, to keep his legs warm.’ Ian rests a hand on Jamie’s shoulder, rubs and squeezes. ‘Ma brither’s a wee Jessie, is he no?’

  Jamie’s mother has pulled stockings over his clumsy, fidgeting feet, up his hairy legs. She has guided his twisted hands into woolly gloves, tugged a hat firmly over his ears and wrapped him in two blankets. You banish an image of Elaine’s sore chin, the baby’s bib, her chubby hands in mittens.

  Chapter 3

  The fluorescent tube in the sun room buzzes and flickers. My watch says it’s almost midnight. The room is filled with the scent of freesias. Was it today or yesterday morning Sarah brought them? I flex my fingers, rub my eyes. Vision’s out of focus. I’ve been so absorbed in the painstaking handling of tension, the counting and lifting of strands into odd- and even-numbered spaces, following with my finger Ashley’s table of instructions on page 510, that it’s only now, as I come to the end of working the sixty-one-strand pentalpha, that I realise my stomach is cramped with hunger.

  When I remove it from the table, the sinnet’s not as compact as it should be, but it’s heavy and beautiful. No dead spots. The three dimensions enhance the planes and angles of the five-pointed star cross-section. It has the look of a shooting star. In the morning, the sinnet will need fairing with a pricker, working over each strand and tightening to adjust the tension.

  I make toast. Cut a slab of butter from the fridge and lay it on the toast. Watch it melt, liquid and golden. As I take a bite, butter oozes and trickles down my chin, slick as sweat. I rub my chin, lick my thumb. Remember the back of her neck, my nose in the salty dip hidden beneath her tumble of hair. And the twin hollows high between her muscular spread thighs, each a curve fitting the curve of my thumbs, the sweep of my tongue. I wipe my chin and lick my thumb again. I pick up the plate of toast.

  No answer when I knock on her door, just silence and darkness.

  Back in the kitchen, the new roller and some squares of sandpaper in a brown paper bag and the unopened tins of paint on the counter remind me Susie may be down before long. Top of her ‘TO DO’ list is the kitchen. Sanding down the tongue-and-groove boarding will be a suitably mindless task; I’ll just keep going until physical exhaustion sets in.

  A taxi draws up outside and a woman gets out. I look at my watch. Late morning. I’ve been up all night then. Undercoating’s almost done. The woman getting out of the taxi is wearing high heels and a leather jacket over a blue dress. The dress clings in all the right places, showing off boobs, buttocks, the long lines of her thighs. Her mass of hair is bundled up into casual loops at the back of her head, which is turned away as she rummages in her ha
ndbag to pay the taxi driver. Spiral silver earrings swing. The curling strands clustered in the hollow at the back of her long neck finally tell me it’s Sarah.

  Today I am looking for an interruption, so I thump on the kitchen window and wave.

  ‘Bring a jumper,’ she shouts back. ‘We’re sitting outside. The sun is shining.’

  She’s stirring something in a white saucepan. Up close, there’s the rich smell of chocolate. She’s still wearing the heels and the leather jacket. The dress shows a good eyeful of cleavage too.

  ‘Hot chocolate,’ she announces. ‘My secret recipe. You’ll find you’ve tasted nothing like it, ever, in your whole life.’ She admires the flow of thick sauce twisting from the chocolate-coated wooden spoon. She’s got some sort of eye make-up on today, her pupils big and dark in the pale irises.

  ‘Unless ...’ she sidesteps swiftly, so close that our bodies are almost touching, then cocks her head and looks up at me through her eyelashes, ‘unless you’ve been to Venice, city of lovers?’

  ‘Never.’ I lean back against the kitchen table so we’re on a level. I get hold of her hips and pull her towards me. The material of her dress is thin. Firm flesh beneath. ‘Looks like neat melted chocolate.’

  ‘Tastes like heaven.’ She whirls away.

  I watch her ladle chocolate with the consistency of custard into two enormous mugs.

  ‘Can’t remember when I last had hot chocolate,’ I tell her. But truth is I can. The chocolaty smell has me thinking of the hot chocolate grandfather used to make for me to take up to bed.

  ‘Good. Follow me.’

  We sit outside on a low bench made from what looks like a breakwater plank, silvered with age. It’s sheltered by a higgledy-piggledy fence Sarah has made from different lengths of driftwood washed up on the beach – odd bits of planking from boats, fencing and beach huts. Some of it’s silvery-grey, some flaking with paint or old varnish. With the white painted wall behind us, the sun is surprisingly warm for November.

  ‘Cheers,’ Sarah says, raising her mug. ‘We won, so I’m celebrating. Well, celebrating again.’ She leans her head against the wall.

  ‘Won? What?’

  ‘Tango.’

  That explains her lithe muscularity, the sculpted thighs – she dances. The suppleness and strength she displayed in bed was a surprise, because she must be at least ten years older than me.

  ‘My feet have blisters.’

  ‘Congratulations.’ I put a hand on her thigh.

  ‘You dance?’

  I shrug, moving my hand up and down her thigh, enjoying the slip of the blue material between my hand and her skin. ‘No. No rhythm.’

  She arches an eyebrow. ‘Well, we know that’s not true!’ Her head drops back and she stares up at the sky. ‘Anyone can tango. I do believe that. Tango’s not about learning the correct dance steps. Not really. It’s about listening – to the music, to the other person, their touch and the movements of their body.’ She throws her hands in the air and rolls her eyes dramatically. ‘God, don’t get me started! You’re not in one of my classes.’

  ‘Classes?’

  ‘It’s all improvisation. You can do it. I’ll prove it to you. Not today because my feet are too sore and I’m knackered. Now just look at that sky.’

  The sky takes up more than 75 per cent of my field of vision from this angle, low down. It’s a bowl of blue. I can hear the waves, out of sight beyond the high shingle bank, pound and rake the pebbles.

  ‘Which reminds me,’ Sarah continues, ‘how’s the rope stuff coming on? Done any more work on that big thing that looks like French knitting on a giant scale?’

  I lean my head back beside hers. ‘The sinnet? Finished it this morning. Today I’m painting and decorating, since I’m supposed to be earning my keep.’

  ‘Your keep?’

  ‘Well, my sister’s more or less feeding me at the moment.’

  ‘Your sister? Her place then, is it?’

  ‘Not exactly.’ I stretch out my legs. Twisting my neck, I roll my skull to and fro on the rendered wall and close my eyes. The sun’s warm and red on my eyelids.

  A pause.

  Sarah’s sucking up her hot chocolate noisily. She wipes her lips. ‘That place has been empty a long, long time. Only the occasional mysterious visitor for a few days, then nothing but the odd-job man for months at a time.’

  ‘Yeah.’ I take my hand from her leg to pick up a stone and aim it at an old lobster pot collapsed on the pebbles. Perhaps Father was the mysterious visitor, though it seems unlikely. I chuck another stone at the lobster pot.

  Sarah sighs.

  ‘OK, mate, I get it. No Entry.’

  I select another, smaller, stone. Weigh it up. Throw it.

  Sarah unzips her boots. They thud on to the wooden decking. She stretches and wriggles her toes about, humming something familiar: What shall we do with the drunken sailor? She draws my attention like a magnet.

  ‘What got you started on the rope?’ she asks, after a few minutes.

  I look at her in surprise. No one has asked me this, the right question, before. It’s a shock.

  ‘In general, or this time specifically?’

  It’s a sort of test for her.

  Sarah’s focused on picking nail varnish from her toenails. ‘Oh I think in general, don’t you?’

  She’s passed.

  ‘My grandfather was a rope maker. He taught me about knots.’ The hot chocolate brought him to mind and now he’s here, in his rolled shirt sleeves and braces, making the sss sss noise of concentration between his teeth as he steps out into the daylight.

  ‘A rope maker!’ She stops picking her nails and screws up her forehead. ‘I don’t even know what rope is made from.’

  ‘All sorts of things, these days, but it used to be mainly hemp.’

  ‘Wow! Hemp? You mean like cannabis?’

  ‘Yeah, hemp is Cannabis sativa; the strongest natural fibre.’

  ‘Well, bloody hell!’ Sarah goes back to picking nail varnish from her big toenail. ‘Don’t stop. I’m listening.’ Her hands are lined and dry. She brushes them together, draws her bare feet up beneath her, and snuggles up. ‘C’mon. Put your arm round me and tell me the story of rope; of you and your grandfather and rope.’

  I put an arm around her shoulders, knocking her hair by mistake so that several looped sections fall down around her face. There are kinks and waves, tightening into corkscrews at the ends; blonde and grey hairs mixed in with the brown. I lift a strand. It smells of cigarette smoke and, somehow, sex. A pulse throbs at her neck, just below the ear.

  She elbows me in the ribs. ‘C’mon. Talk. Begin at the beginning.’

  I unravel her hair bit by bit, winding the curls around my fingers, watching them unwind again and, as I sit in the warm November sun, it’s easy to talk about Grandfather – about the cardboard boxes filled with lengths of different ropes that were kept in his hallway with its yellow light, his ‘walking the world’ stories.

  ‘Why did he say that then, that he’d walked the world?’

  ‘Because of the distance rope makers walked. Up and down the rope walk, every day. Someone calculated that, during a lifetime of rope-making, rope makers walked the equivalent of the circumference of the world.’

  The way she listens, her total absorption, makes me want to keep on talking. I tell her about the first ball of string Grandfather gave me. It came in a brown paper bag that smelled of the hardware store. I was about four. I had to stretch my hand wide around the ball of string to examine the overlapping whorls, the way they criss-crossed, deeper and deeper, into the empty core of the ball.

  ‘Have you ever looked properly at a ball of string?’

  She shakes her head. ‘Never, but I will now.’

  I try to describe it to Sarah, the excitement of going faster and faster round Grandfather’s front room, putting string high up round the door handle, round the hook on the fireplace where the fire bellows hung, low down, round the bottom of the
standard lamp, the feet of the piano stool. By the time I’d finished everything was joined by the lines of string criss-crossing the room.

  Sarah’s eyes are closed now, her breathing regular. Perhaps she’s asleep. She opens one eye and says, ‘I can see it, that room. Don’t stop yet.’

  But the sun is disappearing behind the purplish-grey clouds clumped on the horizon and the air’s becoming cool. I’ve been talking a long time. I’m hungry.

  ‘I’ll cook you fried egg and bacon.’ She reads my mind. ‘If you tell me one more story.’

  So, because she’s asked and because she seems interested in the cannabis connection with rope, I describe the way they used to collect momeea, many years ago. About the hot season that came after the high snows and before the monsoon rain. Young boys ran naked through the cannabis stems and leaves until they fell exhausted among bruised plants. The natives would stroke the momeea from the limbs and torsos of the naked boys and knead it into balls between their palms.

  ‘Momeea,’ she says. ‘What a wonderful word!’

  I stand up, dizzy with words and hunger and lack of sleep. ‘Momeea, churrus, sidhee, bangh, gunjah, hashish.’ I stretch and roll the sounds. Sarah stands too, pretending to stir a huge cauldron. We chant the words together until a woman walks by with a golden retriever and swiftly turns her gaze from our antics.

  We fall against each other in laughter.

  Then, because I’m on a roll, I tell her about the doctor in Calcutta in Grandfather’s time who experimented with majoon and tincture of hemp to treat convulsive disorders like tetanus and rabies.