Shadows & Tall Trees (14 page)

The sudden blare of music startled him.

Terry put his hands to his ears, shocked at how loud it was. It thundered down from the attic, louder than anything he had heard before. It made his heart race, filling him with an urgency to make it stop.

He raced up the stairs, towards its source. It was too loud for any melody, for words. It was an alarm, a war cry, an enormous echoing din.

Bursting into Ava’s room Terry made straight for the stereo and turned it off. He sat panting on her bed, listening to his relaxing heartbeat, savouring the new silence.

When he finally looked up, he received his second shock of the morning: Ava’s bedroom was completely transformed. Her clothes were neatly folded, the debris that had previously crowded the carpet put away. Her desk was clear of make-up and CDs, and in their stead were a pile of schoolbooks and a neatly arranged pad of A4 paper.

Terry stood and turned. The room was immaculate, spotless. Apart from the work on her desk, there was nothing else in the room. Even her picture frames had been removed, the walls bare.

For a moment Terry wondered what Ava’s room had been like when she lived with Prue. He’d never asked her. He imagined that Prue would’ve run a pretty tight ship. He doubted she’d be allowed posters on the walls, to leave clothes on the floor. Maybe these months living with him had been a rebellion against her mother. And if so, why had she reverted back?

Terry shook his head, bemused. He should’ve been glad that the images of bronzed hunks had been removed from his daughter’s room, but it was all so sudden. And where had all of it gone?

Terry crouched, pulling aside the duvet to peer under Ava’s bed, wondering if Prue had also snooped through their daughter’s things. The space under the bed was pretty much empty as well, containing only the discarded rolled up posters and the music box.

Terry retrieved it and brushed it down, the black lacquer gleaming underneath the dust. He thought for a moment that maybe he shouldn’t open it, that maybe it would contain something private, a diary or a keepsake. Maybe something that would explain her strange behaviour, he thought, justifying his desire to unclasp it.

Empty.

He waited for the mechanical notes to being playing. He wound the spring and opened the box again, expecting the action to spur the steel mechanism inside. But no sound came. Terry opened and closed it a few more times, each time anticipating the tinny mechanical melody. But it was silent. He’d take it to his workshop and see if he could fix it, wondering all while why Ava hadn’t told him it was broken.

Terry ordered pizza that night on purpose, hoping that it would incite Ava to criticize him about his cholesterol again. But she ate her slice in silence, cutting it into small neat pieces instead of picking it up with her hands like she used to. He wasn’t sure whether to come clean about going into her room—she’d always been pretty protective about her private space—but she’d soon discover her music box gone and besides, any reaction was better than none.

“I went into your room today,” Terry said, breaking the silence. “You left your music on.”

Ava continued eating.

“Your room looks pretty tidy. I’m glad you took my advice.” But he wasn’t glad at all. He preferred it when it was a tip, when she played her music really loud and ate her food with noisy mouthfuls.

Ava glared at him but still she didn’t say anything.

“Anyway, I’ve taken the music box.” Terry knew she’d know now that he’d been snooping under her bed, but he didn’t care. “You should have told me it was broken. I’ll try and get it fixed, if that’s what you want?”

Ava put her cutlery down and looked at him again. Her eyes were softer this time, almost imploring. It frustrated him more than her anger.

“Ava, for goodness’ sake, what’s wrong?” he said. He heard his words reverberating in his head. He waited a few moments for her to reply and when she didn’t, he stood. “Talk to me!” he yelled, knocking his plate off the table in his rage. It fell to the floor, shattering into pieces.

Ava raised her hands to her ears, closing her eyes.

“Ava, I didn’t mean to scare you.”

But she was up from the table in a flash, running up the stairs to the attic.

Terry watched her go, then he stooped to pick up the shards of crockery. He wondered at Ava’s reaction to the noise. For though his rage had been voluble, and he watched the plate shatter, he couldn’t remember it making a sound.

Terry gradually became accustomed to the silence. He went about his day as if his world had been muted. As if a strange cloud had descended over them, cushioning the usual sounds a household made. Ava withdrew into the silence, into the attic, only appearing for her piano lesson or for meals. He spent so little time with his daughter it was almost as if Prue had never died.

Terry sat in his workroom, listening, waiting for Ava’s piano lesson to begin. Nothing happened for a while and then he heard Philippa’s raised voice and footsteps on the stairs, heading to the attic. He headed to the music room, finding Philippa sat alone on the piano stool.

“What happened?”

“It’s broken, I don’t know how.” She lifted the lid and pressed a key to demonstrate. “It’s impossible, unless someone came in here and silenced it.”

Terry sat down beside her, thinking about how his attempts to fix the music box had also failed.

“So Ava’s still not talking,” Philippa observed, “what’s her problem anyway?”

Terry shrugged. He spread his fingers over the keys, pretending to be able to play. Without any sound it was easier to imagine the melody in his head, the melody Ava usually practiced. The imagined music distracted him from the alarm that was building up inside. Where was the sound going? Why did the house seem to prefer the quiet?

Philippa placed her hand on Terry’s. He stopped moving his fingers in imaginary playing. He let it rest there under hers.

“You know,” Philippa whispered, “before she took a vow of silence, Ava told me about why she wanted the attic room. She said that you hear things better at the top, that the acoustics are better the higher you are.” She spoke the next words slowly. “The best seats in the house are in the gods.”

Terry winced. They were Prue’s words. Repeated often in mock enthusiasm when they couldn’t afford the better seats, lower down. She believed them in the end, doggedly buying the seats the furthest from the stage.

“I lied the other day,” Philippa said withdrawing her hand, “about the piece Ava plays all the time. I do recognize it. You do too. How could you have forgotten?”

Terry stared at the piano keys, hearing only silence.

And then he was sitting in the theatre, one sister on either side. He watched the orchestra pile in to murmurs from the auditorium. They were dressed in black formal wear, placing their instruments at their feet, or holding them in their laps. The conductor arrived and it became suddenly silent, the musicians and audience hushed. And then the tapping as the conductor counted them in.

They were in the gods of course. It had taken Prue ages to waddle up the stairs. But she couldn’t be persuaded otherwise. Besides, they had no money then. She’d placed his hand against her stomach and he felt the baby inside swimming around to the music. At the interval, Philippa volunteered to help him get the ice cream. Prue was relieved to stay where she was.

They’d gone down together.

The theatre had a concave of private boxes. Relics from a time before, closed now for renovation. He was helping to restore them; it was how they’d known about the production in the first place. He was proud of his work. Prue never seemed to want to listen but Philippa was so engrossed holding the pile of ice cream tubs. It would only take him a moment to show her the balustraded parapet, the gilded plasterwork.

He closed the door. The wallpaper was decorated with nightingales.

They just made it back in time for the second half. The ice cream was soft. Prue never said a word.

That night Terry dreamt of the quiet room. He was expecting it, almost hoping for it. He felt as if he were on the wave of Ava’s melody, rising and falling, building up to a final, inevitable climax. He didn’t want to fight against it any longer. He felt himself carried along by it, up the stairs to his daughter’s room, sweeping him across the threshold into the cold, quiet space. The posters were back on the walls. They looked even more obscene than before. He didn’t want to see their oiled male torsos, their wanton expressions leering down at his daughter. He ripped one off of the wall, standing back in surprise at what was exposed behind.

A huge gaping hole. An enormous black pit, audibly sucking the air out of the room. He pulled down another and saw a similar void. He tried to peer into the darkness but couldn’t see anything, couldn’t concentrate on anything but the noise. He removed the other posters, revealing similar vacuums, the sound deafening in the quiet room. Terry felt himself being dragged toward them, pulled toward the unknown.

Beyond the room, beyond the din, he could hear Ava’s faint playing, the familiar melody barely a whisper. He latched onto its harmony and filled his mind with it, following its thread. He grabbed hold of the bedstead, then the desk, moving slowly through the room to the hallway, finally shutting the door behind him.

Silence.

He made his way down the stairs to the music room, this time prepared for the congregation inside. They were dressed in black as before, with their heads bent low as if in mourning. Terry didn’t waste time trying to talk to them. He walked past them looking for the source of the silence. Ava was at the keyboard, her hands on the lid, her fingers dancing along the surface, playing her silent music. But this time Terry confronted what was on top. He could face Prue now that she was dead.

What he saw made him stagger. If he hadn’t been condemned to silence, he would have screamed.

Lying on top of the piano was Prue’s corpse. She looked almost as she did in the Chapel of Rest. Her eyes shut, her hands arranged demurely, but her legs wide open, revealing cheap stockings and a glimpse of her underwear. She looked like some slutty nightclub singer. Terry walked around the piano, an absurd bier, staring at the woman he had once loved.

He felt compelled to touch her cold skin, prepared to shatter the illusion. But just as he reached for her, she turned her head towards him and it wasn’t Prue’s face but Philippa’s staring back, opening her lifeless eyes. And as he recoiled away from her she opened her mouth, ripping the embalmer’s stitches from her lips and letting out the ear-piercing scream he couldn’t make.