The Devil's Music Page 5

  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.

  Chapter 10

  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.

  I say, ‘Elaine is going to be wrapped up in the special white shawl that Granny made for my christening and I have a tie with secret elastic like Houdini, look, Grampy, look.’

  Auntie Jean says, ‘Come on, you scallywags, stop dilly dallying,’ and she stops in front of the mirror and goes close to it. She makes a funny face with her teeth showing. She rubs one of them with a finger and makes the face again. Grampy walks slowly down the hallway. Today he has his stick to lean on. Auntie Jean opens the front door. All the outside brightness and air and birds singing come in. She rattles her keys and she says, ‘Come on, your carriage awaits.’

  Auntie Jean drives us straight to the church. Father is at the door talking to the vicar. Inside the church is dark, like a train tunnel. Our feet make echoes. I walk very straight. We walk past all the pews. People are coughing. Bits float in the light that comes in through the windows. Hoggie’s red hair shows up because there is lots of it coming out from under her hat. She is at the front with Susie sitting on her lap. Susie’s dress has puffy sleeves and coloured stitches that pull the material all together. Mummy is sitting next to Hoggie, and she’s holding Elaine in the white shawl. She has a little hat made of feathers. It is the same shape as an upside-down bird’s nest. I pull my new tie on its pingy elastic. She smiles at me. She is wearing her red lipstick and her hair is dark and shiny. She’s all better now.

  The vicar talks for a long time at the front and his words go round and round the church bouncing off the walls and the pews and the coloured windows and he says about at a christening the baby is given a name.

  Our new baby is Elaine. She is a bit floppy as if she needs winding up or a new battery, and her mouth can’t smile and her eyes stare and I think of the grey mullet we caught in the harbour. Perhaps after the christening, the nurse that comes will say her proper name, not is Baby feeding well? How is Baby today? Baby. Baby.

  Don’t be such a baby.

  The vicar’s voice is old and stony, like the walls. The ceiling is a very long way up. It’s like being in a whale’s belly. Like Jonah. Belly is a wobbly word. Whales are black and shiny.

  And Granny’s piano.

  And beetles.

  Into my head comes something about the black and shiny phone in their bedroom. Andrew, you are not to go in there. I’m hungry and outside their bedroom door. There is only me. The door is closed. Mummy might be in there. Or she might be away at the hospital for a long time to get another baby. The
wind goes ooooo through the gap underneath the door. I want to see if Mummy is in there. I turn the handle and push the door. Inside their room the net curtains are flapping high. The windows are wide open. It is cold. Mummy is lying on her side on the counterpane. I can only see her back. She has all her clothes on except her shoes. She does not move. The black shiny phone by the bed begins to ring. It rings and rings. I look at Mummy’s back. The round bottoms of her toes are squashed in the stockings. She turns over but does not answer the phone. It goes on ringing. I run out of the room and down the stairs.

  The vicar stops talking. We sing ‘All Things Bright and Beautiful’. Grampy’s voice makes shakes in my tummy. After the church, everyone comes back to our house. There is a tea party in the garden and a white cloth over the garden table. Auntie Jean and two of Mummy’s nurse friends go in and out of the back door with teapots and plates of triangle sandwiches and cheese and pineapple on sticks. There are butterfly cakes in the kitchen under a white thing to keep the flies off.

  Mummy sits under the apple tree on a kitchen chair. Susie is high up in the pram with her harness on. The long white shawl is spread over Mummy’s lap. Only Elaine’s cheek is showing.

  Auntie Jean has a new camera called the Ilford and she takes pictures of everyone standing around Mummy and Elaine. Then Hoggie takes a picture of Auntie Jean with Mummy and Elaine. Auntie Jean says, ‘Thank God for that! Now I can get my feet out of these ruddy shoes.’ And she kicks them off. Father turns his head away. The men take off their jackets and put their ties in their pockets. Mummy sits on the kitchen chair in her smart christening clothes. They are not red, not blue, not green. They are no colour and make her sit up straight. Usually on hot days like this she wears a sundress with lots of different colours that leap about. If she was wearing it today she could sit on the grass with her nurse friends and smile and lift her bare arms up in the air.

  I keep my new tie round my neck for ages and ages and stand with my hands in the pockets of my new shorts, same as the men. Then I run to look for Auntie Jean and she is in the kitchen.

  ‘Auntie Jean, Auntie Jean! Please can I have some pennies to jingle?’

  ‘Just a minute, Andy, stop jumping up and down, it’s rude to interrupt.’

  I stand on one leg and she talks to the vicar about the spaceship called Sputnik. She says, ‘That poor dog the Russians sent up, a female, wasn’t it? Uprooted from its life.’

  In space Honey would have no one to give her chocolate drops from the box in Auntie Jean’s pantry. And no one to shake her lead and call Walkies and take her along the towpath to bark at the ducks or sniff the litter bins.

  ‘She wouldn’t like it,’ I tell them. ‘Honey wouldn’t like it one little bit. She’ll make wolf noises at night because she’s sad, and then they’ll have to bring her back.’

  The vicar puts his cup in the saucer and bends down. His nose is lumpy and red.

  ‘I’m sure you’re right, Andy,’ he says, ‘but did you know that the Russians filled the capsule with gas? They didn’t know how to get the poor creature back to earth safely, so they killed it. What do you make of that, young man?’

  The vicar has eyebrows like spiders’ legs hanging over his eyes. I run away from the vicar up the stairs and take the rubber thing out of the tummy of Susie’s piggy bank. Now I have farthings and pennies and sixpences to jingle.

  Father stands with the other men, talking and moving his hands in the air a lot. The men listen to him and smile. He chops at the air with one hand and it must be the end of a story because the men all burst out laughing. One wipes his forehead with his hanky, puts his hand on Father’s shoulder and laughs.

  My neck is hot and sweaty so I take my tie off and put the elastic round my head to make a headdress and slide down the handrail of the steps from the French doors. When I reach the bottom one of the men standing next to Father claps and makes Indian whoops with his finger in his mouth. Father comes over and takes tight hold of my arm. He puts his face down near me. He is not smiling.

  ‘You’re not to behave like a hooligan, Andrew.’

  I want everyone to go home now. I sit on the grass near Mummy and Honey. Mummy’s shoes have twisty bits and gaps and only the end of her big toe shows.

  No room for me on her lap.

  People come to kiss Mummy goodbye and the men have black shiny shoes like Father’s. Mummy’s nurse friends come and stand round her and put their hands on her shoulders and say things in quiet voices:

  ‘Let me take her for a while, it’s so hot for the time of year.’

  ‘They make you hot, don’t they? Holding them against you in this weather.’

  ‘Come inside; let’s find you a cold drink, some ice.’

  They take the white shawl and Elaine away from Mummy’s lap. One of them puts her arm round Mummy’s back. Mummy’s face is wrong and she has tears going into her mouth. Mummy’s nurse friend helps her up. Mummy leans against her and they go into the house.

  They’ve all gone now. There are empty chairs and a rug on the grass. I pull off my shoes without undoing the laces. I pick bits of grass and put lots in my shoes. I take my socks off. I try to push a stick from the apple tree into the underneath of my feet. It makes a white dent and red all round it. Red. White. I find a littler stick and I can hold it between my toes and walk, but anybody can see it. Houdini had secret invisible places underneath his feet. He hid things there so that he could pick locks.

  No one comes to see where I am. I throw the bigger stick for Honey to fetch. I shout ‘Fetch!’ She lifts up her head and puts it down again. I go nearer to the house. I sit on the red steps that go up to the French doors. I will be Harry Houdini the Handcuff King and handcuff myself to the railings and stay until it gets dark and everyone will say, ‘Where is Andy, Andy, where are you?’ and come looking. My handcuffs are upstairs.

  There is a key in the door. I take it out and put it in my pocket. I will pick the lock. My stick fits into the lock but it won’t turn. I twist it really hard and it sort of turns but it is only going round in the hole. It is not picking the lock. My stick has chips and scratches in it now.

  A crash and noise from the kitchen, Father’s voice shouting, ‘THE BOTTOM LINE.’ I throw my stick into the hedge and put the key back in the lock. I run into the house and push open the kitchen door and it is hot and people and noisy voices and faces and cups and saucers and plates and crusts everywhere. Auntie Jean is pointing her finger at Father. Hoggie wipes her hand across her forehead. Even with my hands over my ears I can’t keep out the buzzing crossness. Two of Mummy’s nurse friends are talking to each other in big voices. One of them has the white shawl over her shoulder and her hand is on Elaine’s head. Grampy and Mummy are sitting down. They are looking at the blue table top and Grampy holds her hand. She has a handkerchief in the other hand. The words buzz buzz buzz over the top of Grampy’s head and Mummy’s head. My breath gets jumpy inside me. Grampy looks up and sees.

  ‘There you are, my Treasure! Why don’t we go for a walk?’ He stands up and takes hold of my hand. ‘We can take the dog down to the river.’

  We stop in the hallway and Grampy looks down at my feet. ‘Better get something for those first, had we not?’

  He lets go of my hand and goes back into the kitchen. Crossness is still going round and round like the rollers on the wringer, squashing everything. He comes back with my wellies. The noise from the kitchen has stopped. I count, like for lightning and thunder. Grampy closes the front door and we go up the side path to get Honey from the back garden. When I get to twenty the loud voices start up again.

  We walk all along the river and Grampy tells me that today Elaine is not quite all there under the white shawl. He tells me about Houdini’s tricks and the freak shows with the fattest woman in the world, and all about how Houdini went to all the police stations in all the towns and said, ‘Handcuff me and put the leg irons on,’ and Houdini always escaped and was famous because he got into the newspapers. Except once when a ba
d man jammed the handcuffs shut on purpose.

  Houdini made lots of money escaping from handcuffs and one day he went home to where his Mummy sat on a kitchen chair and he poured gold coins all over her lap.

  Grampy and me walk over the bridge next to the railway line but there are no trains today, just the track going a long way away. We go up the spooky footpath in the cool between high fences and walls and through the allotments all the way to Grampy’s house.

  Chapter 11

  You stand by the front gate. The muscles of your belly, slack after Elaine’s birth, are tangled with tension, the sense that something awful is about to happen. Susie waves from her new seat on the Silver Cross as Jean manoeuvres the pram down the kerb to cross the road. Susie has a harness with metal clips to attach her to the seat’s frame but still the whole arrangement seems precarious, perched high above the gleaming black body of the pram where Elaine lies, out of sight. You’d fussed, tucking her down with a blanket, fiddling with the angle of the sun canopy, until Jean put a hand on yours and said, ‘Stop.’ This is Jean’s idea, after Andy ran away to your father’s house yet again, this time in the middle of the night. She says you need some time with him, time without one or other of the babies constantly in your arms or on your lap. But today Andy is flushed and irritable. Perhaps he has a temperature. The mumps are doing the rounds.

  You step into the cool of the larder with the butter dish in your hand and stand for a moment in the half light, listening to the distant rattle and pause, rattle and pause of a lawnmower: yet another summer afternoon.

  Lying open on the kitchen table is a hard-backed notebook where you’ve set out, on blue-lined pages, lists of things to do.

  Monday: washday, grocery shopping for the week.

  Tuesday: turn out the dining room, ironing, polish the front step.