The Devil's Music (30 page)

    ‘Earl Grey or PG Tips?’ She’s brought both down. I don’t drink tea. Perhaps she imagines I’ll invite guests.

    Then she’s fussing over the children, wiping jam from their fingers and mouths, putting them on the lavatory and chattering about the trials of the early stages of potty training. Every now and then she pauses, a hand to her side, to catch her breath. I return glue and glitter and cotton wool to the plastic crate and carry it out to the car.

    At last, I wave them off, promising to phone in a week or so. A light rain is falling. A taxi pulls away from Sarah’s house. Sarah – eyes dark and dramatic with make-up, hair piled up – blows a kiss from the passenger seat.

    Christmas.

    In avoiding the question of Christmas, I hadn’t found out exactly what Sarah had said.
Glad she’ll think about Christmas
. Why would she want to? It will be unbearable.

    I get the sheepskin and walk out towards the harbour mouth. The full moon casts shadows, mudflats liquid grey in its light.

    In fairy tales, parents send children out to the forest to die, or be killed. There are wicked, murdering stepmothers. In real-life murder cases, the first suspects are close family. Strange that I’ve ended up in Crete where they draw their families together, three generations often living closely with each other.

    I don’t know where these thoughts are leading me.

    Families: Sarah never mentions children. I’ve never thought to ask. She never mentions parents either, only friends – although perhaps it’s only that she refers to people by name rather than by a label of ownership. I gather from something Tom said that her parents were hippies. A ‘wild child’, she spent her childhood in one commune after another. Perhaps that sort of extended, patchwork family works better. A circle is so difficult to escape.

Judy clutches the white bundle. Punch shrieks and whacks a stick on the side of the stage.

    Something terrible happens to the baby. Perhaps Punch strangles it – you can’t remember. Already a headache throbs.

    ‘Take care of Baby while I go and cook the dumplings,’ squawks Judy. She shoves the bundle into Punch’s arms and bobs off stage. Punch places the scrap of white on to the ground and rolls it from side to side.

    ‘Hush-a-by, baby, on the tree-top,’ he croons, batting the bundle between his flat wooden hands. His hooked nose and the slant of his painted eyes give his face the menace of a mask but Susie, cross-legged on the floor with the other children, mouth slightly agape, appears entranced. You crouch down behind her and run a hand over her blonde head.

    Several more children join the watchers on the floor. Their mothers step back a little into the folds of the curtains at the windows of the darkened social hall, turning to each other, their heads close in conversation. One of the women has the Marilyn Monroe look: peroxide blonde, arched brows and pouting, red lips. When she tilts her head back, laughing, breasts prominent in a tight-fitting top, you recognise her as the woman Michael danced with at Mr Robertson’s retirement do in the autumn.

I open the front door with my new key.

    ‘You stupid, stupid woman!’ From the kitchen comes Father’s worst voice. The quiet, hard voice.

    Susie, clutching her satchel, tucks her head into her school scarf and runs with fast little steps through the hall and up the stairs. I follow, but in slow motion. I’m not scared. I step past his bag by the radiator. Past the tallboy; past the coat-rack. The kitchen doorway is just after the coat-rack. With each step, blood swishes in my ears. One STEP, another STEP:
What’s the
(STEP)
time
, (STEP)
Mr
(STEP)
Wolf?
The stairs – patterned carpet, stair rods – are just past the kitchen door. Then in-between my big steps and the blood swishing in my ears, there is a little voice, a tiny voice – like a blow of air, like someone whispering behind their hand, lips tickling my ear. I stop. And there it is again. The Voice!

When you heard about Marilyn Monroe, you’d stood in the kitchen and wept. It was on the wireless one morning last August. Her death: the police discovering her body; the talk of sleeping pills; suicide.

    Susie and Andy were in the garden, the two of them fighting over the swing.

    Today your eyelids are swollen, eyelashes falling out. You mustn’t cry here.

    No contact, as agreed. You have heard nothing. Some nights you wake at the brink of orgasm, his beard between your thighs. During the day, it’s his voice haunting you, or his smell. Sweat and skin, the male smell of him caught in the roots of the thick hair on his chest.

I shiver. There it is again.

    ‘
Now!
’ The Voice says.

    I breathe very deep into my lungs, and I am

    HOUDINI THE HANDCUFF KING!

    I can bend over backwards and pick up pins with my eyelashes.

    I’m in the hallway, almost at the kitchen door.

    ‘
Now!
’ The Voice says, ‘
Now!
’

    I drop my satchel and leap past the kitchen door. I pull open the door of the cupboard under the stairs and climb inside, shutting the door behind me.

    Straight away, Father opens it again. My eyes are screwed up tight, my arms round my knees.

    ‘A word with you, young man. Out!’

    I screw my eyes tighter, press my fingers to my eyelids. The Voice is fading.

    ‘Do you hear me? Out!’

    Rolling over, hands flat over my ears to get rid of HIS voice, I curl into a ball.

    Father grunts. His hand grips my arm, my ankle, pulling at me. ‘Do as you’re told, Andrew!’

‘Look out! Look out! He’s behind you!’ the children chorus. One little boy jumps up and down. ‘Be-
hind
you! Be-
hind
you!’ The words thud out as his feet hit the floor.

    ‘What’s Andy up to today?’

    You jump at Michael’s voice in your ear and straighten too quickly from bending to Susie, pushing the balled-up handkerchief up your sleeve. Blood rushes in your ears; the Punch and Judy furore ebbs and flows in waves of sound. Punch flings the white bundle out of the window and one or two of the children giggle uncertainly. You put a hand on Michael’s arm.

    ‘Oh, hello.’ You kiss his cheek. You mustn’t think about Marilyn Monroe, mustn’t think about Ian and cry here at a hospital social function. People will be watching. ‘I didn’t think we’d see you today. Andy’s with Hugh and Stephen.’

    Michael still has his white coat on, so it’ll only be a dart around the hall to show his face before he goes back to the operating theatre. He’s given Susie a sugar mouse from the Christmas tree. She holds it loosely, still wrapped, staring up at Judy, who is back on the tiny stage, screeching and beating Punch with the cudgel.

    Michael puts a hand on your shoulder to turn you back towards him. ‘You don’t think he might be spending a little too much time running wild with those boys? Mrs Cunningham told me she saw the three of them on the bridge throwing stones at the ducks on Tuesday.’

    A knot of tension throbs at the base of your skull. You can’t get it right.

    But, you don’t want Andy under your feet all the time. For the past few days of the school holidays it’s been a relief to have him out of the way, down by the river with Hugh and Stephen, not ricocheting around the house baiting Susie. It’s exhausting keeping an eye on him all the time.

    Michael’s watching your face. You rub your forehead. ‘Most of what they get up to is harmless, Michael.’

    Hugh’s parents are musicians: Leonard plays in an orchestra; Mary sings. They have stage names: Leo and Maria. Maria wears flounced skirts with net petticoats. She plucks her eyebrows. These are all reasons for Michael to be wary of Hugh’s ‘suitability’ as a friend for Andrew.