The Devil's Music (22 page)

    ‘Susie  ...’

    ‘You sound a bit rough. Have you got a cold? Are you keeping warm enough? Is the water sorted out yet?’

    ‘I ... No.’ I pull the collar of the sheepskin jacket up. I don’t know where it came from; it’s way too large and scruffy to be my father’s. ‘I need to know—’

    ‘OK. Fire away. How’s the decorating going? I was thinking of coming down this weekend, wasn’t I? I thought I’d bring—’

    ‘About Elaine.’

    ‘About?’

    ‘Elaine.’

    ‘What about Elaine?’

    ‘About what happened.’

    ‘I told you—’

    ‘No! Not when she was born. Just listen for once, will you?’

    There’s a pause, then Susie says in a low voice, ‘Have you been drinking? It’s four o’clock!’

    ‘Here. What happened – here, with Elaine. I want to—’

    ‘I was only four or five. I don’t really remember. Well, she was quite fat, wasn’t she? I think. There are no photographs, or Dad never had any that I saw. You must remember her better, surely?’

    ‘But down here, at The Siding. You and Mum went to get ice creams, remember? And you took so long, for ever, I—’

    ‘Ice creams?’

    ‘Yes.’

    ‘I don’t remember, specifically, anything about Elaine and ice creams.’

    ‘No, you and Mum and ice creams. We never came down here again after it happened.’

    ‘Well, Dad was never keen on the beach, was he? It was only Mum. I think he only kept The Siding in case, after Mum left, in case she went back there. Because she loved it.’

    He bought it for her. It was hers.

    ‘But, we never came down here again, did we?’

    ‘Well, after Mum left we didn’t, no. Jean thought Dad could make a packet renting it out, but he was adamant. He’d bought it for Mum. I’ve always thought it was a bit like a parent when a kid dies, you know, when they leave the bedroom exactly as it was, as a sort of shrine. The Siding was Dad’s shrine—’

    ‘I killed her.’

    ‘Andy, you
must
have been drinking!’ Susie’s voice softens. ‘Now you
know
that’s not true. Parents leave because they fall out of love with each other, not because of the children, though children often blame themselves and—’

    ‘Not
Mum
, Susie—’

    ‘HANG ON, I’m coming.’ She’s yelling. I have to hold the receiver away from my ear. ‘For goodness sake! Doorbell; sorry – got to dash. Let’s have a really good chat when I come down.’

    ‘Susie—’

    The phone peeps. My money has run out.

    On the way back to The Siding I knock again on Sarah’s door; still no answer. No car. Not sure if there ever was one. I stand for a bit in the shelter of her driftwood fence. The Siding:
a shrine
. Sarah said someone apart from the odd-job man came here, now and then. Would Father have come here, by himself? Susie might know.

    I knock again: nothing. I stop by the Jelly Tree, unfasten a faded pink jelly shoe and put it in my pocket.

    Inside, I put the jelly shoe on the table in the sun room. I open another bottle of Merlot and sit in the dark. On the steep bends of the mountain roads in Crete, where people have gone off the road, their souls flying from their bodies, the Greeks build shrines. Little houses with glass doors. Some elaborate, some simple. Sometimes they’re built to look like Greek Orthodox churches. Relatives visit and pray and leave things that would have been important to the person who’s died: a flower, a necklace, a shoe, a bottle of Coke, a page torn from a pad with a scribbled note.

    The sourness of the wine slides down my throat and settles in my belly.

You hear her key in the front door and only just have time to lift the needle from Jean’s Elvis record as Mrs Hubbard bustles towards the kitchen, leaving a faint metallic smell of Silvo in the hallway. You slide the record into its cover, turning Elvis with his quiff and thrusting hips to face the wall.

    Upstairs, you take an embroidered tray cloth from the linen cupboard. By the time you’re back in the kitchen, Mrs Hubbard has vanished into the sitting room. The clang of the coal shovel tells you she’s clearing last night’s ash. You fill the silver sugar bowl with fresh sugar lumps, humming. It’s Wednesday. Jean will pick the children up from school and give them tea. Today you won’t be alone, hands on the wheel, your spine, your neck, rigid with the grip of need to see Elaine and to hold her in your arms.

    Instead, you’re meeting Ian and Jamie; going for an outing with them. It’s not the first time. Hard to say how you’ve slipped into this. You had to phone Ian to let him know that Michael did not want the bathroom redecorated after all, and then you bumped into him more than once leaving Coyne’s. You expressed an interest when he mentioned his preliminary drawings for the Christmas card commission; he invited you to drop by the houseboat to see them. Of course you were too nervous to take him up on that. Then, at the Fawkes Fair, Ian was there with Jamie and you had the children. He asked you again, standing close in the crowd queuing for the coconut shy, when
were
you going to come and see his drawings? He grinned at the cliché overtones. It was there, at the fair, possibly, he suggested another outing with Jamie and it had been easy, simple to arrange when Jean picks the children up from school on Wednesdays and the day is, more or less, your own.

    You’ve told no one else what you do when you leave the house all day on these particular Wednesdays, but have rehearsed one or two stories. You have time now that each and every day no longer revolves around Elaine, time for ‘good works’: hospital visiting, taking groceries to Michael’s more elderly and infirm patients, perhaps some sort of activity in the school – all appropriate occupations for a doctor’s wife. You have the Morris you can drive and your skills as a nurse. You’re going to make yourself useful and outings with Jamie will be a suitable activity.

    ‘I can see it’s doing you good,’ Jean said last Wednesday, when she dropped the children back to the house, ‘having time to yourself again. I told you it would.’

    When you open the front door to leave, Mrs Hubbard is on her hands and knees, brushing red polish on to the front steps. She doesn’t look up.

    ‘I’m just off then, Mrs Hubbard. I’ve put out a tray in the kitchen for your elevenses.’

    ‘Thank you,’ Mrs Hubbard mutters, head bent to the brushing.

    ‘I’ll go by the back door, so as not to interrupt you.’

    The winter sun is bright and the air in the car is hot and leathery. You’ll park at Coyne’s, go in for a newspaper, then take the footpath down to the river to meet Ian. You turn the key in the ignition and push in the choke, looking back at the house. By two o’clock, Mr Hubbard will have come in his car to collect his wife. You have never seen him, only the pale green Hillman Minx with its engine running. You imagine Mrs Hubbard’s house: a dry Mr Hubbard waiting in an armchair, his newspaper folded, crisp and tidy on his lap, until his wife gets back. Or perhaps he’s fat in a string vest, sweaty, his raw sausage fingers thrumming the table.

    Mrs Hubbard’s neat cap of hair gleams, smooth, edged with a roll of curls so tight and precise that the rollers could still be buried in there somewhere. When she gets home from a morning’s cleaning, Mr Hubbard’s meaty fingers caress the ordered curls until they tumble, wild and unruly, around his wife’s thin face. She is transformed.

    You laugh out loud at this image as you glance over your shoulder before reversing out of the drive. Something blossoms at your ribs. Today you’re taking Jamie to Burnham Beeches, Ian will be folded into the passenger seat of the Morris beside you and there’ll be glimpses of his profile in the flickering light beneath a tunnel of branches. Perhaps you’ll pull up in a lay-by, unfold the wheelchair, spread out the picnic tarpaulin on a bank covered with copper beech leaves and drink coffee from the tartan thermos you’ve packed for the journey. Jamie will sit in his wheelchair. You’ll throw leaves into the air for him and he’ll watch them fall. Sun will filter through a canopy of leaves on to Ian’s beard so that the purple glints shine through the red and brown and ginger. He’ll throw back his head the way he does, and you’ll see the hairs, thick as pine needles, sprouting from his neck, from under his ears, from the tender underside of his chin.

You reach the boat earlier than planned. Ian has bent down to pull on his Chelsea boots.

    ‘What’re we gonny do?’

    ‘We talked about Burnham. It’s so beautiful at this time of year.’ You pace about the sloping kitchen of the houseboat, throwing the car keys up in the air with one hand and catching them deftly with the other. ‘It might be tricky with his chair though. What do you think?’

    ‘Ach, nae,’ his voice is almost a whisper. ‘Nae. I mean ... ma heid is spinning.’

    You stop throwing the keys. Ian’s forehead rests on his knee, the zip on his boot remains undone. You stare at the curve of muscle in his upper back, the cinnamon-coloured hair lying on the rolled neck of his black sweater.

    He stands very slowly, passing a hand over his beard. ‘Ye ken.’

    The car keys clatter to the floor. You pick them up and as you straighten, he’s close behind you, hands on your hips, pulling you towards him. He rests his mouth in your hair. Blood crashes in your skull.

    ‘Ian.’ You put out a hand to the edge of the sink, its coolness. ‘I can’t.’

    Immediately he drops his hands and moves away. ‘Forgive me.’ His face is tight. He’s backed up against the cupboards on the opposite side of the kitchen, hands behind his back. ‘Please. I shidny—’ He looks at the floor.

    ‘No.’ Your fingers are white-knuckled, clutching the bunch of keys. You place them carefully on the draining board. ‘No. It’s not that.’

    Water plops softly against the hull.

    Your feet in the sensible lace-up brogues, freshly polished, are side by side on the dusty boards. His Chelsea boots are unzipped. In the space between your feet and his, there’s a splatter of red paint on the floor. Left toe round to the heel of the right shoe. Without undoing the laces, easing your foot out, and then the same for the other foot, kicking the heavy shoes aside, you’re stepping towards him, bare boards catching on your stockinged soles.

    His breath is coming hard, laboured.

    Another step.

    Greasy turpentine and sweat: the oniony, locker-room smell of him, a young man in tight black jeans with creases behind the knee, around the bulge and thicker material of his flies.

    He’s motionless, watching you.

    Your mouth is flooding with saliva as you focus on the ribbing round the bottom of his black polo neck, the smoother, finer knit over his chest where the blond hairs, shooting upwards, will push against your hands.

    You step closer. The boat rocks.

    Lifting your head to look at his face, craning back, and heat pools in your groin, fans between your legs, the inside of your thighs, flames your neck, your cheeks. Your breasts tingle, your body fluid as the incoming tide.

    Close to, his pupils are huge. On his shoulder, the woman’s hand, a wedding ring, engagement ring, is yours – and now – your held breath bursts out as a sob, your body tumbling – his beard in the curve of your neck softens your limbs, edges meld as you’re pressed to the unfamiliar contours of his groin, his stomach, his firm muscularity. His shoulders are so much wider than Michael’s. In your belly leap little licks, urgent as fear.

    Now his hands graze the hollow of your back, stroking, sliding down, tugging at your blouse, freeing it and then his upper arm hardens under your palms as he pulls at the fabric of your slip, his breath heavy, his beard, tussocky, brushing your cheek.

    ‘Let me feel your skin,’ he whispers. ‘Please let me feel your skin.’