Night Music (39 page)

But she had to work, he reminded himself. She had her music to attend to. It was probably for the best. He took a deep draught from the steaming mug. And she was too much of a distraction. With Isabel in the house, he didn’t know how he’d ever complete the job. In fact, faced with the daily prospect of Isabel in the house, he wasn’t sure he’d ever want to work again.

Isabel was in the kitchen, where she could hear Matt hammering. He was doing what he had said he would do for once. He seemed calm. When Kitty saw the working bath her face would be a picture of delight. So why did she feel this knot of anxiety?

It’s because you haven’t played properly for weeks, she told herself. A break from music had always made her almost physically uncomfortable. And it was easy to let your imagination run riot in a house as isolated as this, without constant traffic, doors slamming and passers-by to bring you down to earth. She would focus on the Scherzo and by the time she had it right Matt would have finished and could leave their lives for good. He would be a neighbour to whom she nodded as they passed in the lane, perhaps called upon if they needed any building work. A distant presence.

Matt had briefly abandoned the bathroom to check on the plasterwork repairs in Thierry’s room. He let his fingertips run lightly over the pink surface to ensure there were no bumps. The plaster was as cool as alabaster. Around him, Thierry’s clothes and toys lay scattered wildly, as if a tornado had passed through. Bits of Lego stuck in pyjama bottoms. Pants, socks, books tossed into corners.

It reminded him briefly of Anthony’s when he was little. Matt had built him a wooden garage, a beautiful thing with a working lift and little bollards to mark out parking spaces. But Anthony had refused to play with it, preferring to make things from clay and Plasticine, which Laura had said was ‘educational’, then treading minuscule pieces into the beige carpet.

He picked up the poster he had taken down to do the plastering, and laid it on the bed. Then he pulled up an old dust-sheet from the floor and went out on to the landing to shake it out and fold it. As he wielded the rough fabric, he could just see through into the master bedroom. The bed was made up.

Matt gazed at the expanse of white linen. She had finally moved into the room he had created for her – for them. Why had she not told him? It was a momentous thing. She was there, in his room.

Downstairs, her music was going better, stopping and starting less often, more fluid. Some long, dreamy passage was flowing up the stairs, and he wondered if it contained a message for him. Music was her way of expressing herself, after all. Matt dropped the dust-sheet on to the floor and went into the bedroom, moving slowly, as if influenced by the tempo of the music. He registered the sunlight, the gleam of unscuffed varnish on the floorboards, the opalescent blue of the sky through the bay windows. It was as beautiful as he had known it would be.

And then his eyes came to rest on the work boots at the foot of the bed. Two large, dirty boots, faded with dried earth, their soles still bearing the imprint of some recent outing.

Men’s boots.

Byron’s boots.

Matt stared at them, then lifted his head and saw the bags in the corner. The towel slung across the radiator he had fitted. The toothbrush placed neatly on the windowsill. Something in him shut down, and shrank in on itself, leaving nothing but a great black hole, a vacuum, where feeling had been.

Byron and Isabel in the master bedroom. His bedroom.

His bed.

Matt shook his head, twice, as if attempting to clear it. He stood very still. The loud rushing noise he heard was his own breathing. He walked out and across the landing, then went slowly and deliberately down the stairs. Towards the music.

There were so many things she had loved about playing in an orchestra, Isabel thought, as she entered the last bars of the Finale. She knew some musicians who thought of it as a factory floor, and considered the strings section no more than a musical sausage machine, playing to order, following instructions. But she loved the camaraderie, the excitement of building a wall of sound, the way that even the harmony of tuning in front of a good audience could make you catch your breath. And there were the rare moments of inspirational genius that came from a great conductor. If she could escape to it, even a couple of times a month, it would restore something to her. Remind her of who she was outside this house.

It was as she rosined her bow that she heard something. ‘Matt?’ she called, thinking perhaps she had heard him on the stairs. But there was no reply.

Isabel lifted the violin to her chin again and checked the strings, making minute adjustments to pitch. This violin, she thought absently, could never sound like the Guarneri. Someone else was probably playing that at this very moment, enjoying the rich notes of the G string, the shimmering brilliance of the A. What do I have? she thought, almost laughing. Twelve square metres of reclaimed clay roof tiles and a new septic tank.

She was about to resume playing when she noticed a low thump, steady and repetitive. She stood very still, mentally calculating what she had asked Matt to do. He had completed the skirting. Plastering wasn’t noisy. The bathroom, to her knowledge, only had to be fitted. But it continued,
thump, thump, thump
, until a crash and the whisper of plaster dust from the ceiling brought her to the door.

‘Matt?’

Nothing. Then again –
thump, thump, thump
. An ominous sound.

‘Matt?’

She put her violin on the kitchen table and began to make her way up the steps to the hallway. He was on the first floor. She went upstairs. The sound was easy to make out now – something heavy meeting something solid.

She walked slowly to the master bedroom – and there he was, sweating slightly with the effort, a huge sledgehammer in his fists, rhythmically hitting the wall. A hole some four feet by five showed through to the unfinished bathroom.

Isabel stared at the concentration on his face, his muscular strength as he swung his hammer backwards and over his head. At the great hole in her wall. ‘What are you doing?’ she said.

He didn’t appear to have heard her. He swung again, knocking out several bricks. Chunks of plaster fell over the white bedlinen.

‘Matt!’ she yelled. ‘What are you doing?’

He stopped. His expression was unreadable. His eyes, a bright blue, seemed to pierce her. ‘It’s no good,’ he said, his voice hideously calm. ‘It’s no good, this room.’

‘But it – it’s a beautiful room,’ she faltered. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘No,’ he said, his mouth set. ‘You’ve ruined it. Got to take this out now.’

‘Matt, you’ve spent—’

‘Nothing else I can do.’

At that point Isabel knew she was trying to reason with someone who could no longer see reason. She was in her house, alone, with a man holding a sledgehammer. Her mind raced as she tried to work out how to make him stop, whether he would begin on some other room next. A small part of her was gauging the level of threat. Be firm, she told herself. Don’t let him know you’re afraid.

She glanced out of the window, and saw Thierry coming across the lawn towards the house. Her heart began to pound. ‘Matt!’ she called again. ‘Matt! Look – you’re right,’ she said, her hands fluttering upwards. ‘You’re absolutely right.’

He stared at her, as if this were something he had not expected.

‘I need to rethink the whole thing.’

‘It’s all wrong,’ he said.

‘Yes. Yes, it is,’ she agreed. ‘I’ve made mistakes. Oh, lots of mistakes.’

‘I just wanted it to be beautiful,’ he said, looking up at the ceiling, with something in his face that gave her hope. She let her eyes slide to the window. Thierry had vanished. He would be heading for the back door.

‘We should have a talk,’ she said.

‘That’s all I wanted. To talk to you.’

‘I know. But not now. Let’s have a think about things, and we’ll talk tomorrow, perhaps.’

‘Just you and me?’ The hole in the wall was a great gash behind him.

‘Just you and me,’ she agreed. She laid a hand on his arm, half reassuring, half keeping him at a distance. ‘But not now, yes?’

His eyes searched hers for the truth. She kept hers steady, her breath stalled in her chest. ‘I’ve got to go, Matt. I must practise. You know . . .’

It was as if she had woken him from a dream. He tore his gaze away from her, rubbed the back of his head, nodded. ‘Okay,’ he said. He didn’t seem to notice the chaos he had created. ‘You practise and we’ll talk later. You won’t forget, will you?’ She shook her head, mute.

Then, finally, he walked to the door, the sledgehammer hanging loosely in his hand.

*    *    *

Fourteen times she dialled Byron’s number, without making the call. How could she? He had been happier than she had ever seen him, with the prospect of paid employment, a cooked supper with an old friend, in a house where he had earned his keep. What could she say to him? I’m afraid? I feel threatened? To explain that, she would have to tell him a little of what had taken place between her and Matt. And she didn’t want Byron to know what she had done all those weeks ago. She remembered how his hand had closed over hers the previous evening, and thought about his gentle refusal, which had told her he wanted her no closer. She had no right to ask him for anything.

Several times she had considered calling Laura, but had not because she didn’t know what she would say to her. How could she tell a woman whose husband she had slept with that she now felt terrorised by him, that she suspected he was having some kind of breakdown? She could hardly expect a sympathetic response.

Besides, it was possible that Laura knew already. Perhaps she had thrown him out, and thereby sent him over the edge. Perhaps Matt had told her what had taken place between them. It was impossible to know what was going on outside these walls.

She tried to imagine Byron was still under the house. Come back, she told him silently. And then, almost before she knew what she was saying:
Come home
.

That night, Isabel did not allow the children to stay out until dark. She called them in on a pretext – persuaded Kitty to make more biscuits for the party, and Thierry to do some reading aloud. She was cheerful, attentive. She explained away her compulsive checking of window and door bolts by saying Matt had left expensive equipment upstairs and asked her to be extra careful with it.

Finally, when they had gone reluctantly to bed, Isabel waited an hour, then went into her bedroom. From her near-empty jewellery box, she removed a small brass key, which she tucked into her pocket. He had placed it in the loft, well away from curious children. Now she climbed up and, huffing with the effort – the case was made of solid wood – brought it down the rickety ladder and hauled it into the bedroom.

She did not look at the hole in the wall: its significance, its threat, seemed so much greater at night. She unlocked the case, pulled out the gun and loaded it. Pottisworth’s hunting rifle, which Byron had found on top of the kitchen cupboard.

She made sure the safety catch was on and checked the sights. Then she walked round the house, double checking the locks, and letting Pepper out of his normal sleeping place in the kitchen so that he could patrol too.

She checked her phone to make sure Byron hadn’t called. Then as the light faded, as the birds outside finally grew silent, she sat at the top of the stairs, where she could see the front door, the rifle resting lightly across her knees.

Isabel listened, and waited.

Twenty-two

She woke to the sound of someone whistling. She opened her eyes and lay still, registering with a glance that it was a quarter to seven and Matt was in the bathroom. She could hear the water running, the sound of a shaver on rough skin. Laura remembered that she hadn’t bought him any new blades. Matt hated to use a blunt one.

She pushed herself upright, wondering whether he had been in here while she slept. Whether he had noticed the two suitcases. If he had, he wouldn’t be whistling.

Laura slid out of bed, padded out of the bedroom and paused at the bathroom door, taking in the now unfamiliar sight of her husband stripped to the waist.

‘Hello,’ he said, catching sight of her in the mirror. It was an oddly casual greeting, the kind you might make to a neighbour.

She pulled her robe round her and leaned against the door. It was the closest she had been to Matt for several weeks. His body, semi-naked, seemed as familiar as her own, yet alien, as if it were no longer something she was supposed to observe.

She pushed a frond of hair off her forehead. She had rehearsed this conversation so many times. ‘Matt, we need to talk.’

His gaze didn’t shift from his reflection. ‘Haven’t got time. Important meeting.’ He lifted his chin, the better to examine the stubble beneath it.

She kept her voice level. ‘I’m afraid this is important. I need to tell you something.’

‘I can’t stop. Got to be out of the house in . . .’ he consulted his watch ‘. . . twenty minutes. Max.’

‘Matt we—’

He turned round, shaking his head.

‘You never listen, do you, Laura? You never actually listen to what I’m telling you. I can’t talk to you now. I’ve got things to do.’

There was something odd in the way he said this, his voice a little too deliberate. But it was impossible to know what was going on in Matt’s head. She chose to say nothing. She let out a long, shaking breath. ‘Okay. When will you be back?’

He shrugged, still scraping at his chin with the razor.

Is this how it ends? she asked herself. No proper discussion? No fight? No fireworks? Just me scheduling a time to sort out the basics, watching you shave for someone else? Is this me, handling it in my usual ridiculous, ladylike fashion, politely trying to get you to admit that this is the end of our marriage?

The words emerged uncomfortably, as if her throat were swollen. ‘We need to resolve this, Matt. What’s happening. With us.’

He said nothing.

‘Can we talk tonight? Are you coming back here?’