The Devil's Music (21 page)

Houdini wasn’t born Harry Houdini. He was born Erich Weisz in 1874 in Budapest. Some people never grow out of playing let’s pretend.

One day I let my alarm go on ringing and ringing. I put my head under the covers and breathed in my warm bed air.

    ‘Andrew! This is not the way to behave.’ His voice was low and hard.

    ‘Please, Andy,’ she begged. ‘You need to get dressed for school.’

    ‘Andrew. How many times do I have to tell you?’

    ‘Not Andrew,’ I told them. ‘Houdini. I am Harry Houdini the Handcuff King.’ If they don’t call me Houdini I won’t hear.

In the dark of the under-stair cupboard, I listen for The Voice. It will tell me what to do. It will give me commands. But Houdini’s Voice doesn’t come so I tell myself stories instead.

Here is a true story I tell myself in the dark of the cupboard under the stairs. It’s 1906. Houdini is locked into a cell on Death Row. The cell door clangs. There are metal bars, cold and lumpy. They taste of blood. A dirty mattress has shapes like brown countries on a map and there’s a toilet without a seat in the corner. The toilet is brown inside. There are dark corners all around the cell and brown tiles. Brown is the colour of old blood. The key turns in the lock and the jailer walks away, keys going jingle jangle at his hip.

    In the sole of his left foot, Houdini has hidden something to pick the lock. He picks the locks on every single cell on Death Row and all the murderers escape. Pale thin men with striped clothes like pyjamas. Death Row is filled with echoes and shouts and cheering from the murderers.

This I will not tolerate. Pull yourself together.

You are in a jostle of bodies, juggling a warm glass of white wine, cubes of pineapple with cheese on a cocktail stick that you’re lifting to your mouth, and a tipsy Mr Robertson, whose nose is too close to your cheek as he asks you if he has ever told you how much you remind him of Ingrid Bergman, a dark-haired Ingrid Bergman, and you’re trying to smile and say, ‘Yes, yes, really, you
know
you have,’ as you turn away towards the buffet table, holding your glass higher in an attempt to put some space between Mr Robertson’s body and your breasts when, far across the crammed hall and above the crowd, you glimpse broad shoulders and the back of a head of coppery hair and it’s so unexpected, hours into Mr Robertson’s retirement party, among Michael’s colleagues and wives, the Friends of the Hospital – Ian.

    Your knuckles knock against Mr Robertson’s watch as he raises his hand to your hair and wine is spilled, your blouse wet and clinging.

The kitchen is crowded with ladies laying out trays of green cups and saucers for tea and coffee, but you manage to make your way through to the sink. In the hall, the jazz band is just starting up – the opening bars of something by Fats Waller. Michael will want to dance. Dancing means no need to make conversation.

    There’s a pile of unused tea towels by the sink, neatly folded blue and white. You use one to blot at your cleavage. As one of the ladies squeezes past with a tray, a palm rests in the hollow of your back, a light pressure. Good: Michael. You can dance and conceal the damp patch until it’s dried a little.

    ‘Oh, look what I’ve done!’ You sigh, about to make some comment about Mr Robertson as someone else edges past between the sink and the kitchen table, and the man behind you – staggering in the press of bodies – leans against you to make room. Your buttocks brush against his groin as you turn, your shoulder squashed at an angle against his chest. Not Michael, but Ian. His face so close you can see, just at the base of his nostrils, the roots of the coppery hairs of his moustache, the way they pierce the skin. There’s a glimpse of tongue and lower lip through his beard and alcohol on his breath mixing with a spicy, moist smell, an unfamiliar aftershave. You catch him staring down at your breasts – the clinging damp patch on your blouse – at your mouth, and you notice tiny flecks of green in the brown of his eyes when they meet yours. A jolt; the spark of attention: male, sexual. And an answering buzz between your legs. His eyes slide to your lips again, head dipping forward, and for a startled moment you think he’s about to kiss you. He must have had too much to drink.

    ‘Ian.’ You lift both hands to his shoulders, one still clutching the crumpled tea towel, to hold him at arm’s length. ‘Have you come to ask me for a dance?’

    ‘Excuse me.’ Someone else squeezes awkwardly past the two of you.

    Ian stumbles again, his beard at your ear. ‘Jive?’

    You laugh. ‘Let’s just get out of everybody’s way.’

You must have been mistaken, because he doesn’t seem drunk at all once he’s on the dance floor and, to your surprise, he’s a better dancer than Michael – better at leading. The two of you lunge and slide at first, and you’re aware he’s feeling his way, judging your ability. Michael is occupied with twizzling a petite blonde who smiles up at him admiringly, so you relax, forget about everything else, and focus on the way Ian tugs you hard towards him, a palm to palm hand-hold at shoulder height before he sends you spinning with an exhilarating increase in velocity, catapulting away and bouncing back.

‘That was good.’ Ian takes a carton of cigarettes from the back pocket of his trousers.

    The two of you have joined a few other couples cooling down outside. His jacket is around your shoulders. Eyes on you as he lights up, he raises his eyebrows in query. In the past, at home, you’ve refused his offers of cigarettes, but the fleeting pull of intimacy in his gesture is irresistible. Your blood is still pulsing from the dancing as you slip the cigarette between your lips and lift your chin, keeping your eyes on the flare of the lighter he holds towards you. He’s watching your mouth.

    ‘Caught in the act!’

    Jean plumps herself down on the bench beside Ian and, head on one side like a bird, introduces herself as your younger, single sister. She smiles at him coquettishly.

    ‘I’ll have one too while you’re at it.’

Later, touching up your lipstick in the Ladies Room, you accused Jean of flirting.

    ‘And why not?’ she replied, eyeing you in the mirror. ‘It’s not as though I’m going steady at the moment and, as far as I can tell from his avid attention to various ladies here, neither is he.’

    And you could see Ian enjoyed it, the way Jean monopolised the conversation, making him throw back his head and laugh, then coaxing him back into the hall to dance with her.

Michael rolls into bed beside you, his hand plunging between your legs.

    ‘Feeling better tonight?’ His breath is vinegary.

    ‘Hmm.’

    ‘We’re all right, aren’t we? Now? We’ve got through this?’

    You concentrate on keeping your limbs relaxed, determined that your body will not reveal antagonism, but the hand staying there, his touch, persistent and careless as his words, forces you to shift on to your side to escape his thumb’s rubbing insistence. He misreads the movement, slides his hand up under your nightie and begins stroking, over and over, the same spot on your hip.

    ‘You seem more your old self. Dancing, having fun.’

    You put a hand on his, to still it. He kisses your cheek, your neck, your ear, and pulls your nightie higher. There isn’t really a choice. You will submit to his advances, go through the actions at least, because then he’ll leave you alone. He’ll go to sleep. Refusal will put him into a rage. There’ll be an argument.

    ‘...yourself again,’ he’s murmuring as he lifts his body over yours. ‘My party girl.’

Afterwards, lying awake, your mind slips back to Ian’s body pressed against yours in the crowded kitchen, that electric kick. Surely he felt it too. Or perhaps that’s not the way it works, perhaps you merely gave yourself away. And, remembering you still have not talked to Michael about the bathroom, you imagine Ian back in the house, picture him – hands behind his head, shoes off, long legs stretched out beneath the kitchen table – and summon up other occasions, an alternative series of events unfolding.

Today is bad. Afternoon. Low tide. Sarah’s not there. Dull skies crouch overhead and the horizon is missing, lost where milky grey sky merges with milky grey sea. Wind slices up through the floorboards, lifts and rattles loose weather-boarding, gusts at the window panes like some hefty beast prowling. I’ve had a drink but it hasn’t helped. I can’t shake off an image from last night’s dream. Walls rising up, again and again, looming so high they must topple. Windows with bars. Always the same fucking walls, fucking bars on windows. Again and again. The retching fear.

    I need to get out. Confront the wet sand. Its expanse.

    Outside, wind punches into me. White-foamed waves are roiling. The sea’s roar is all I can hear. Spray flies, my face soon damp with it. Flocks of birds migrating south, wheel across the dead sky. And four swans, necks stretched out. Salt on my lips, my hair tacky with it. The sea heaves. Once again the shingle banks have been pounded by the overnight storms into dramatic slopes and troughs, pebbles heaped high against the breakwaters. I stop at the edge. Rivulets of seawater drain from the pebbles and carve waterways into the sand. I step on to it with one foot and watch damp sand swell around the sole of my trainer. Almost imperceptibly, my foot is sinking. My vision pulses in time with my racing blood. I have to turn away, step back on to the pebbles, heart smacking hard as a squash ball.

    On the way back, I try again at Sarah’s door. No answer. She hasn’t been there for days as far as I can make out. Can’t remember what she told me about when she’d be back. I walk west, out into the wind and rain, away from the wet sand and away from the shabby, ramshackle houses.

    NO PARKING ON ANY ROADS. THIS IS A PRIVATE ESTATE.

    I head for the salt marshes. Rain trails down my back. A curlew picks its way over mud covered with webbed prints. A few yellow petals flutter on the straggly clumps of gorse. Only three o’clock and so gloomy a light or two already glimmers across the reservoir from the caravan park on the other side. Scum congeals at the water’s edge, where it can rise no further up the mud. Wind knives at my face and ears so I turn back towards the houses. Some new wire-and-wood fencing protects newly planted wisps of gorse that are struggling to grow. They don’t stand a chance. Tough as it is, gorse grows distorted here, burned by the savage salt-laden wind.

    I’m hungry again. I forget to eat.

    I kick at a piece of masonry along the road.

    I’ll phone Susie.

    The phone box smells of urine. There is graffiti on the concrete floor. I get halfway through dialling Susie’s number, then put the phone down. I rest my forehead on the back wall of the phone box and read the cards advertising tarot readings, telephone sex, a ‘Dreaming Workshop’.

    Try again.

    ‘Andrew! I didn’t expect to hear from you so soon!’ Susie’s voice is bright. I picture her in the steamy kitchen of The Vicarage. ‘How’re you doing?’ A whistle blows, shrilly, over and over again in the background and there’s a loud rhythmic clanging.

    I run a hand over my face and beard.

    ‘Andy?’

    ‘Here.’

    ‘Can’t hear?’ A door closes, muffling the background noise. ‘Sorry, is that better? The boys have the music box out – got to keep them occupied somehow in this atrocious weather.’