Puccini's Ghosts (7 page)

Lila went back outside and collapsed breathless onto the grass, rubbing her eyes and shaking. She was shocked and cold and wet; her legs and arms were soaked and scratched, smeared with black, her nose and eyes sticky with smoke. Her hair and clothes reeked of it and she could taste it in her mouth. She lay for a few minutes with her eyes closed until the ground felt so cold against her back that she had to move. She struggled to her feet, paused, and looked round. All was quiet again. There was no sign of her mother. The door of the shed beyond her father’s vegetable patch stood open and was moving gently in the wind; she could see that the shed was empty except for the usual gardening tools and the laden, chaotic shelves where he kept his weed-killer, pesticides, turpentine, brushes, half-empty tins of paint and sinister, unlabelled jars. Her mouth dried. How much poison stood on those shelves? Just then came a clatter and a loud cry from the driveway in front of the garage, and she started running.

Her mother was standing in a pool of red. Red ran down her flailing arms and dripped off the ends of her fingers, casting a ragged circle of splashes all around her. So it
was
happening. As Lila gazed, the world seemed to halt and stretch and fall away and everything became very quiet and flimsy, as in a slow-moving dream; her mother receded into silvery white air, the ground between them swelled and disintegrated, leaving her weightless in empty sky. She looked like a statue in a fountain although far-off and less solid, her red drapery shimmering and transparent, her form fluid, scintillating, as if Lila were staring across a bright, distorting distance or catching glimpses of her through water. Then her mother stooped to pick up something—a paintbrush—from the red pool, and when she straightened up and turned, the world dropped back in place. Shapes resumed boundaries and substance, colour flooded in. Time righted itself and began to tick along again, passing with the swift ease of a nightmare. Lila and her mother were back on the driveway under a rainy sky, their clothes stirring in the breeze, faces stained. A pair of seagulls gloated from the ridge of the garage roof.

With a quiet grunt, Fleur pushed one foot at the overturned paint tin and with the hand holding the brush she lifted the hair from her face. Behind her Lila read, in scarlet letters seven feet high across the left garage door,

BAST

Shining beads from the letter B were already glopping off the bottom of the door and staining the ground. From the tin—Lila recognised it as one of the colours her father had used for the kitchen cupboards—a red ooze was still spreading around her mother’s feet. If it hadn’t been spilled there would have been ample paint left for the

ARD

that she guessed she was planning for the right door to welcome her father home.

It was so nearly funny—the day’s havoc ending in such a spectacle as these foolish giant letters, her mother dripping in paint, not blood—that for a moment it seemed impossible that anything serious could be happening. But Lila was too frightened to laugh. There had been rows before, of course. It wasn’t that. There had been objects thrown and broken, whole days of grand opera at numbing volume. But until now, 5 Seaview Villas had soaked up the arguments and held them in its walls, like the damp. The poisoned air in the house, bloated with spent storms, at least had not escaped, at least nobody
knew
. But this? Such unadorned madness would not be missed by anyone passing by on the road. It was not a busy road, but that was not what mattered: here was her mother out of doors in a rag of a dressing gown soaked in red paint, hair felted to her scalp and her eyes lost in hatred, in front of ‘B A S T’ seven feet high on the garage door. It was insane and shameful and worse than that, public, and she did not even appear to care.

A memory of
Turandot
’s jagged music was still sounding in Lila’s head, reverberating like hollow pain. How shrill and untrustworthy those voices, what lies they told. Love made nothing clear or right. It did not triumph. As she looked at her mother standing on the driveway—ridiculous, filthy, defiant—Lila loved her with such a surge of want and pity and rage that she again wished her dead. This wasn’t love the way an opera would have you believe it. The real thing was far too big a mess to fit to music. Lila leaned back against the wall of the house feeling the cold stone scrape against her spine, and buried her face in her hands. Real love could annihilate the beloved; there was in it something smirched and lethal.

When she looked up, she was alone. A pattern of footprints and flicks and scratches like fallen red petals and twigs trailed up the side of the garage towards the back garden. Once again
Turandot
wafted out from the house. Lila didn’t much mind. It sounded almost like a return to normality. The rasp of the music and the lies it complained of were preferable, in their way, to silence.

i
’ve been up since six, unable to sleep. I’ve got an ache in my legs and grit on my feet, as if I’d been walking about all night. The house is warmer than it used to be—all houses are—but all day I’ve felt the need to keep moving. Done a bit to shift the stuff in the kitchen. Oxfam, mainly.

I get to the undertaker’s late. It smells, in a chemical kind of way, layered, as if each smell oozes into another, higher one that is trying to mask it. The premises are done out in pale grey and lavender. The carpet has a pattern like scattered pins and there are misty photographs on the walls of mountains and sunsets and rainforests at dawn. I’m put in a waiting room with quilted armchairs and tight arrangements of artificial flowers in ugly colours—turquoise and ultramarine—and boxes of tissues. Wherever you look there are bibles. I wait while they dress him in the clothes I have brought and then they come to tell me he is ready.

He lies in a coffin in a room without windows. There are more chairs and acrylic flowers and bibles, but I don’t take in any more detail than that. It’s cold. The air-conditioning makes distant, electrical lapping sounds and in the glowing yellow light everything in the room looks buttered. I want to see his hands. One rests over the other across his torso and they look hard and waxy now, but I know them. I saw them lift teacups, wipe his moustache, wash carrots under the garden tap, but the surprising trust I feel about these hands means, I suppose, that they must also have spooned food into me, picked me up after falling, tidied my fringe out of my eyes, though I do not remember. It’s an odd thought that his hands won’t move again.

I pull up a chair and look at him hard, and am relieved to see that all that was important about his face is gone. He’s aged, but considering he is dead he really doesn’t look bad. What I am looking down at, dressed in a suit and tie and pillowed in wads of gleaming artificial satin, is not him. But it’s a good thing to be reminded of who he once was, especially since I haven’t seen him in nearly eight years.

Every couple of years I used to send him his tickets, for the flight and a seat in the stalls. Each time we act it out this way: it’s dutiful of me to send for him, generous of him to pretend he is keen to come, essential for us both that the time together is short and that we make no reference to my mother, to Uncle George, or to my never coming anymore to Seaview Villas. I make it easy. We do not meet until after the late finish of the performance in the evening and then it’s just a drink before his taxi back to a slightly less than convenient hotel, and I always put him on an early flight home. I ring him next day to see that he has got back safely, and then resume the pattern of a short call every three weeks or so. Well, every month. We get quite good at this.

The last time turns out to be my last season in Antwerp, coincidentally, before my semi-retirement. It’s a bitchy game, opera. And by then it’s a struggle for him, but he still comes. I don’t know what he is expecting—he says nothing about the performance except to ask if I am sure I’m in it as he didn’t quite manage to spot me. He has never liked opera. I don’t try to get him over after that. He isn’t up to it anymore, and anyway by this time I am concentrating on building up my pupil numbers. Maybe I could come to see him, and we mumble about this on the telephone from time to time, but I tend to stay close to base and in touch with the opera house in case I’m needed at short notice. Disasters do happen! After all I do have the repertoire and they asked me to step in as Henrietta Maria in
I Puritani
once, in 1992.

I’m on the doorstep, I’m a local resource, use me! I keep telling them. I say, You know you can always call on me in a crisis, I don’t mind short notice.

I don’t think I manage to make them realise that I don’t object to being rung up at any time.

5

L
ila was stroking one finger through the red paint and wondering if it would come straight off the door with turpentine when Enid arrived. She turned and watched as she freewheeled on her bike through the puddles up the side of the house, feet outstretched and pedals ticking, her small eyes fixed on the doors. She stopped and balanced on one foot, spinning the pedal round with the other. She was wearing pedal pushers made from material patterned with pineapples, and a yellow knitted windcheater. Enid had no hips; the clothes were perfect on her, so light-hearted they made Lila’s heart sink.

‘Hiya, what’s all that?’ Enid asked, nodding past her.

‘All what?’ Lila said, not looking round.

‘That. All that mess.’ Enid turned glassy eyes on Lila and pulled a bag of Parma Violets from her pocket. She poured a few into Lila’s cupped hand then tipped back her head and downed some herself.

‘Senga’s away to Filey till Wednesday,’ she said in a gust of violet-scented breath. ‘Senga’s dead nice when you get to know her. What’s the matter with you? What
is
that?’

‘That?’ Lila chewed and swallowed. ‘Oh, don’t you know? That’s
Turandot
. It’s an opera. My mother’s playing records.’

‘I don’t mean the noise, I mean that. The letters, that all over the door. All that paint.’

‘It’s by Puccini. It’s her favourite.’

‘Not the noise—that. I’m talking about
that
.’ Already she was preparing to win. Between them, it was always a victory to point out something embarrassing about the other. She leaned forward, peering and sniffing. ‘You’re filthy. You smell all smoky. Have you been crying?’

‘Crying?’
Lila said, too strenuously. ‘ ’Course not! No, I was, I was just doing a bonfire. Just a minute ago. My mum—she had rubbish to burn, I was just burning a bit of rubbish. Makes your eyes sting.’ She rubbed them to make the point.

‘Stinks, anyway. So what is that—all that mess?’

Lila turned round. ‘That? That was just an accident with the paint tin. It got knocked over. And the paint ran a bit when they did the letters.’

‘
Who
though? What for? What’s that meant to mean, bast? What’s it meant to mean?’

‘Oh, it’s just this thing. Are they new?’ Lila said, nodding at the pedal pushers. She was so envious of Enid’s clothes she usually could not bear to draw attention to them, but she had to deflect her; she needed time to think of something.

Enid flicked a hand against her thigh and said, ‘Uh-huh. My mum made them.’

Lila’s insides curdled. ‘Really nice.’

‘They’re only a Butterick,’ Enid said. ‘Out of a remnant.’ She picked away a loose thread. ‘You should get your mum to make you some.’

‘Uh-huh.’ Lila’s mother did not sew. Enid knew this.

‘See my mum? She made them all in the one go. Last night. Started when the shop shut.’

‘Oh? Right you are, then.’

‘If you ask her she’ll give your mum a lend of the pattern.’

There was silence.

‘Want a lend of the pattern?’

‘Maybe.’

‘My mum says they’re that easy you don’t even
need
the pattern. Only four pieces and a zip, five if you want the pocket. Not counting waistband, you can just use bias binding. Could yours not even manage that?’

‘Maybe.’

‘Can she really not sew at all then? Thinks she’s the next Maria Callas. Senga and Linda says so too.’

‘She does not.’

‘See your mum, where is it she’s from again?’ Lila’s mother was English. Enid also knew this.

‘England,’ Lila said, in a deliberately tired voice. ‘So what?’

Enid asked slowly, ‘And what is it you said she used to be again?’

‘An opera singer. I’ve told you before.’

Enid was glaring at her. ‘Has she ever went to Italy?’

‘No. So what? Neither’s yours.’

‘Ha! So! She can’t have been a real opera singer, then. Senga says opera’s Italian, you get it in Italy, and your mum’s not from Italy. She’s never even went!’

‘What?’

‘She’s never went to Italy in her life! So how can she be?’

Lila pounced. ‘See you? See Senga? You’re stupid, the both of you. You get opera loads of places,
loads
of places have opera, everybody knows that. You’re just stupid. You get opera everywhere.’

Enid was unabashed. ‘Not round here, you don’t.’

Lila stared at her. She was always underestimating how unashamed Enid was of her own ignorance. Somehow, because Enid seemed simply not to believe in it, it became Lila’s problem. She, not Enid, had to work around it.

‘You’re that childish,’ Lila drawled. Enid shrugged. ‘And anyway,’ Lila went on, ‘I’d have thought you’re too busy going to church to bother with Senga McMillan. I wouldn’t think going to
church
all the time was exactly Senga McMillan’s cup of tea.’

‘It’s not going to church, it’s the Fellowship of Sinai Gathering in His Name,’ Enid said. ‘Senga doesn’t go. You don’t have to if you don’t want to.’

‘Doesn’t she now? So is she not heeding the Word? Dear, oh dear, oh dear. I thought that was a sin, not to heed the Word,’ Lila said. ‘That’s what you said.’

Enid looked over the garage roof into the sky. ‘The Lord is a loving father. He hears his children when they call unto him,’ she said.

‘And how is it you call, again? You don’t have hymns, do you?’

‘We do verses.
And
psalms.’

‘Don’t sing them though, do you? It’s stupid. You just say them.’

‘Music is a distraction from the Bible Message. Musical performance is a temptation to vanity. The Lord hears us when we speak in humble prayer.’

Lila felt suddenly sick at heart. ‘Oh, who cares?’ she said. It was tiring, to despise but at the same time envy Enid’s certainties.

‘The Lord does,’ Enid said flatly. ‘Anyway, Senga says it’s a free country. What
is
that?’

From the front of the house came a blast of brass and strings and Lila’s mother’s voice, rising with Callas’s:

Son la figlia del Cielo!

I am the daughter of Heaven!

‘I told you, it’s
Turandot
.’

‘
No. That.
BAST.’

Lila turned back to the garage.
‘B A S T?’
She spoke casually. ‘Oh, the
B A S T
? It’s this new thing, have you not heard?’

‘
What
new thing?’

‘This thing my mum’s doing. She’s doing this thing for opera singing. It’s the Burnhead Association for Singing
Turandot
. It’s for people that want to sing
Turandot
.’

Enid gazed at the garage door, dropping her bottom lip so that it hung free of the top one and revealed the bulge of her tongue, today stained violet. Lila had often seen her do this and she intended never to tell her how stupid it made her look.

‘So why’s it on the garage?’

‘Because…because that’s to be the headquarters. They’re going to do it up inside.’

Enid’s mind was clumsy with anything new. Lila watched her weigh up what she could see and hear against the reliability, or otherwise, of her explanation. For a moment she felt a secret joy in the speed of her own mind, until the difference between them filled her with loneliness.

‘In a
garage
?’

‘To begin with,’ Lila said. ‘Just to begin with.’

‘Let me see.’

‘No! You can’t. It’s not done yet. There’s still clearing up to do.’

‘Okay, I don’t care,’ Enid said. ‘So what, anyway.’

‘So
what,
what?’

‘So what your mum’s an opera singer, so what she’s started a stupid singing
Turandot
thing. Who wants to sing, anyway?’

Lila said lightly, ‘Well, actually, lots of people.’

‘Not me. Senga neither. Wait till I tell her. And Linda. They’ll die laughing. Want more violets?’ She fished for the bag.

‘You’re just ignorant.’

‘Who cares? Want to go down the shore?’

Lila didn’t, but they went. She couldn’t let Enid near the house.

They loitered for a while around the beach not far from the tip, kicking over piles of seaweed and the usual washed-up tangles of rope, bottle fragments, broken plastic and pulpy rags. Lila always half looked for treasure, hoping for something to glint through the green-black weed that she would spy before Enid did, but the gleam of silver or gold always turned out to be foil from a cigarette packet, a milk top, a tin can. They found the bumper of a car and a broken lobster creel, a table top and the remains of an armchair; they sniggered at the shreds of tampons lying ragged in the debris, bleached by salt water. Further on they found an upturned rear car seat and hauled it over and set it facing the sea next to a bare, washed-up tree trunk. Enid suggested collecting empty herring crates to use as little tables and making a fireplace in front of it with rocks, but after ten minutes neither of them could be bothered anymore.

It rained again half-heartedly, in large, isolated drops that pocked the beach like silent gunfire and made a field of tiny craters all the way down to the sea, whose surface swallowed the rain with grey calm. Soon after that Lila fell mute and Enid, resentful at finding herself no less bored than when she arrived, sulked all the way back to the house to pick up her bike, and went home.

Lila saw her off from the driveway and wandered round to the back. The ruined green dressing gown was stuffed in a paper bag next to the dustbin. She fetched turpentine and rags from the shed and did her best with the paint marks on the kitchen floor and then she stood, becalmed in a turpentine haze mixed with the tarry smell from the Rayburn that filled the kitchen whenever rain got in the chimney.
Turandot
was still playing. She wondered if the volume of the stereogram had been turned down a little or if she were at last growing deaf. Exhausted, she climbed the stairs on shaking legs that she hardly trusted to get her to the top, collapsed onto her bed and fell asleep.

Later from her window she saw her father arrive, looking like a soft, battered grey bell under the billowing cycling cape. He set his bicycle against the wall and stared at the garage for a while, then he marched round to the back door, pulling the cape over his head. A few seconds later
Turandot
stopped. From downstairs Lila heard raised voices, and resigned herself. But not long afterwards the shouting stopped, too. A door opened and was closed. A hush settled over the house, but it was too early to tell if the Last Bloody Straw might be capitulating to Gone Too Far This Time. The silence was of the kind that occurs when an engine cuts out but might at any moment be kicked once more into combustible, raging life.

When she had waited for as long as she could, Lila crept across the landing to the top of the stairs. Would she always be like this, afraid to walk through the house? After her parents’ rows she was always embarrassed at how long it took her to get used to being in the same room with them again; she didn’t understand how they could be so unaffected, why for days afterwards only she remained wrung out by the things they’d said. She waited till she heard conversation before opening the kitchen door, believing that to arrive in the room during an exchange of words would make her entrance less conspicuous.

Her mother was sitting at the kitchen table with a burning cigarette in an ashtray and a cup of tea in front of her. She was wrapped in a thick dressing gown that didn’t belong to her and she looked cleaner but bedraggled and nervy, as if she’d been recently plucked from a hideous predicament—pulled out of a pothole maybe, or winched from a shipwreck. She sent in Lila’s direction, without catching her eye, the fluttery smile of someone rescued but not yet quite able to believe it. Raymond was leaning against the sink stroking his moustache and smoking, from time to time drinking from a bottle of beer—Fleur’s authority in the matter of drinking straight from bottles (boorish,
typical
) having for the moment lapsed. He rose forward on his feet when Lila came in, gave her a nod and went over to the Rayburn. Setting the beer bottle down, he began cracking eggs into a bowl and beating them, holding the cigarette between two fingers as he worked, another of Fleur’s strictures flouted.

‘I’ve rung your Uncle George in London,’ he said, not turning round. ‘He’s coming up to stay.’

Lila gasped as a shudder of pleasure and fright ran through her. ‘
When?
When’s he arriving? How long for?’ She hadn’t seen him for more than two years. He’d be amazed to see that she was no longer just a little girl. He might think her pretty. He had to think her pretty.

‘How long’s he staying?’

Raymond was melting butter in a saucepan. He tipped in the eggs, set the pan back on the stove and began stirring.

‘That depends,’ her mother said flatly, drawing on her cigarette and looking at Raymond’s back, ‘on your precious father,’ from which Lila guessed that she expected Uncle George to take her side about the car and to stay until her father caved in.

‘Och, Fleur…’

‘Oh, for God’s sake…’

‘That’s enough. We’ve all had enough now.’

Both their voices were wary. Fleur drank some of her tea, her eyes still fixed on Raymond as he stirred at the stove. Just the prospect of Uncle George’s presence seemed to create between them, if not harmony, then a slight benefit of the doubt.

‘Eliza, make some toast, will you? Give your father a hand.’

‘You leave Lizzie be, I’m managing. Want another cup?’

Lila went to the dining room to lay the table, not wanting to test the strength of the truce. A little later they sat down to eat, her parents grudgingly. Lila, between them, kept watch.

‘You’ll have to do something about the door. Before he comes. That spare room door won’t close. It swings open.’

‘It’s holding moisture. You just need to push it hard so it clicks. I’ll tell him he just needs to push it hard.’

‘You’d better open the window. I can’t reach it and the room needs airing.’

‘There’s damn all in the pantry. I’ll get extra bread and eggs tomorrow. Lizzie could call at the butcher.’