The Devil's Music (39 page)

    Finally, I push the bowl aside, wiped clean, and she gets hold of my hand again. ‘Now, if you’ve had enough to eat, we’re going to bandage your feet and get straight in a taxi to the station. We’re going to visit Susie in hospital.’

    When she’s finished with the bandages my feet will not fit back into my deck shoes. Nowhere near. We talk about using plastic bags, and I have a flash of memory, of myself as a boy and my mother tying plastic bags over my gloves so that I could play in the snow. Then I remember the wellingtons in the sun room at The Siding. I don’t know whose they are, but they’re huge. They’ll do.

    I hobble into Sarah’s studio while she goes to look for the wellingtons. The studio is in darkness and smells of underground caves. The light goes on in the sun room next door. Sarah is bending to search for the boots under the table.

    I can’t see the concreted Jelly shoe from here, there’s the cardboard box and some other junk in the way. A rope hangs from the rafters. I don’t remember telling her what I planned to do with the Jelly shoe, but I must have done because the rope is hanging right over the table where I left the Jelly shoe in its concrete. And there’s a noose. I can see the turns.

The train is hot and airless. Sarah’s face, resting on her fist, is smudged in the dark glass as she stares out at the night.

    ‘Any drinks? Tea? Coffee? Any snacks?’ The young black guy pushing the trolley has a lisp. I catch his eye. He pauses by our table and smiles, a grin that shows teeth caged, top and bottom, in a brace. His gums are very pink. I order black coffee; Sarah chooses hot chocolate. The cardboard cups are placed with a flourish on folded paper napkins and we’re given thin wooden spatulas for stirring.

    ‘You’re welcome,’ the young guy says when we thank him, and he smiles broadly again before rattling down the aisle.

    The disturbance is a relief. We shift position to sip our drinks, and finally look at each other across the table.

    ‘You look rough,’ she says. She takes the plastic lid from her cup and stirs her chocolate with the wooden spatula. ‘Where did you disappear to?’

    I try to gather my thoughts, to think of some way of telling her where I’ve been when I’m not completely certain myself.

    ‘I walked. Caught a train – to Wild’s Rope Walk.’ This much I remember, more or less.

    She raises her eyebrows in query.

    ‘Yorkshire – where my grandfather used to work.’

    ‘Why there?’

    ‘Why?’

    I found myself there. White splinters of frost thickened the grass blades, my left hand enclosed in the thick leather of Grandfather’s sail-maker’s palm. Wild’s Rope Walk in Jerry Clay Lane beside Foster Ford Beck: now a straight row of terraced houses; men washing cars and women hanging washing.

    I went for lots of reasons.

    ‘Not sure, really.’

    She sips her drink. I think about Sarah stirring the rich chocolate she made for me, its texture like custard. She asked the right questions then, questions I wanted to answer.

    ‘What were you feeling?’

    ‘Feeling?’ I swallow a mouthful of coffee, weak and lukewarm. ‘I was frightened.’ I’m guessing that’s about right. I don’t remember what I felt. There was the Jack Russell cocking its leg; the black telephone receiver swinging. I don’t remember much else. But words might anchor my mind. Sarah is waiting for more. ‘Also, a sort of disgust.’

    ‘Disgust?’

    ‘Yes.’

    ‘At?’

    ‘Not sure.’

    People fold up newspapers, collect up carrier bags and shuffle to the door. Sarah stares out of the window as the train pulls into a station. A blur of light and faces; scarves and hats and long dark coats. Nobody gets on. Our part of the train is now empty.

    ‘Why not tell someone where you were going?’

    People always want to be told.

    ‘Didn’t think it was anything to do with anyone else.’

    ‘So it was nobody else’s business?’

    She sounds pissed off. I want to point out that she disappeared to London regularly but then I realise that she did usually tell me when she was going. I need to select my words with care.

    ‘I didn’t know. Didn’t have a plan. Sorry. And sorry you had to deal with it all, get involved.’

    ‘I didn’t mind.’ She rests her wrists on the edge of the table and leans towards me. ‘That’s what people do usually, Andrew, get involved.’

    She flops back against the seat again and gazes out of the window for a while. Then she sighs and places both hands palms down on the plastic table top, looking at them. She opens her fingers, spread-eagled on the table; closes them again.

    ‘There’s something I need to tell you, Andrew.’ Spreads her fingers wide; closes them again.

    The harsh overhead light shadows her eyes. Surely she can’t be pregnant.

    ‘Because I don’t know who else will find the time to tell you, at the moment.’ Now she fiddles with the lid, trying to fit it back on to her cup. She gives up and sighs. ‘What you told me about the accident on the beach?’

    I prop my chin in my hand. On the wall opposite, an arrow points down the carriage. Next to it are symbols for a man and a woman. A third stick person sits in a half-circle.

    ‘That’s not what happened, Andrew. Maybe you were frightened by what really happened, or thought it was your fault. I’m not sure why. Perhaps gaps in your memory, things you couldn’t explain, as a child. How many times have you told that story?’

    Water from my bucket slopping over my shins; the stretches of wet sand; Elaine lying face down; my mother scooping her up.

    ‘Never.’

    ‘But to yourself? I wonder how many times you ran it through your own mind. Because Elaine didn’t die that day on the beach.’ She puts up a hand. ‘Don’t say anything. Let me keep going.’

    But it’s kaleidoscopic, my mind scattering into fragments that fly apart. I shove my hands in-between the rough upholstery and the press of my thighs, stare at her lips. Watch them move.

    ‘I asked Susie. She couldn’t remember anything about an accident on the beach. Seemed odd. From what I can gather you must have seen Elaine again after that day, but perhaps she was ill, or you were frightened, or something. I don’t know. I can’t explain it. I can only tell you what Susie has told me. And Hoggie.’

    Her upper lip is fanned with fine lines. No lipstick.

    ‘Andrew, Elaine was put in an institution, against your mother’s wishes and only temporarily, but then your mother had some sort of breakdown and your father thought caring for Elaine was always going to be too much for her, too much for everybody – something along those lines, from what I can gather. Both you and Susie were taken to visit Elaine, but you had some sort of hissy fit because of the look of the place. The bars at the windows, or something. Later, Elaine went with your mother to Spain.’

    Bars in wax crayon on my mother’s wardrobe mirror, the wax sticky and crumbly against the smooth glass. When was that? And the photograph of Houdini, manacled and semi-naked, standing behind bars that were not real, but drawn on to the photograph – it seems relevant and I want to tell Sarah, but she leans towards me again, gripping the table with both hands.

    ‘Wait. Just listen. Susie says Elaine was there one day and not the next. Your mother had to get your father’s permission, of course, but they went to Spain to live with the man she was in love with – an artist? He’d had an accident. You know who that man is?’

    I can’t make sense of her words.
Spain
, she keeps saying
Spain
. I look away from her mouth. One black symbol by the arrow on the wall opposite has a square for a body, the other a triangle: a man and a woman.

    Sarah is shaking her head. ‘She must have had her work cut out, because later they cared for his handicapped brother too, ran some sort of care place.’

    It’s a little more than half a circle that the third pin man sits in, his stick arm held out as if to receive a gift. My body rocks with the train. Pinpricks of light flash past in the dark shine of the window, my face a pale smear just out of focus.

    The photographs. Her belt with its silver buckle; the hat, a fan of starched white. ‘She was a nurse.’

    Elaine. I try to picture her – a woman, an adult – but my mind slithers.

    ‘My mother – she was a nurse.’

    ‘I know.’

    ‘Elaine’s living in France with my mother.’

    Her throat makes a sound, choked. ‘Oh shit! I’m so sorry.’ She half rises, reaching across to me. Her face is collapsing.

    Don’t, I want to say to her. Please don’t cry.

    She’s out of her seat, pressing my head to her belly as her hand moves over my ear. Her voice, reaching my ear, is distorted.

    ‘No. It was Spain. Almeria. And, Andrew, no, Elaine died when she was about twenty.’

    So she has been dead. There is no way I could have brought her back.

    Sarah’s jeans smell as if they’ve spent too long damp.

    ‘Passed away in her sleep, is what your mum’s friend Hoggie said. They hadn’t even realised she was ill. I’m so sorry.’

    I talk to the thick denim material. ‘You’ve met her. Hoggie?’ Sarah’s met a ghost from my childhood.

    ‘No – we spoke on the phone. I stayed with Richard for a while, to help with the boys.’

    ‘At The Vicarage?’ I can’t imagine her, barefoot, braless, sitting down at the scrubbed pine table with Richard and the boys.

    ‘Shove up,’ she says, a hand on my shoulder as she squeezes in beside me. ‘Yes.’ She rolls her eyes dramatically and pouts. ‘For a vicar, Richard’s lousy at communication. And you’re really not his flavour of the month, you know.’

    ‘We don’t get on.’

    ‘“It is his considered opinion,”’ Sarah does a passable imitation of Richard’s silky voice, ‘“that you are almost certainly suffering from low spectrum autism.”’ She flicks her plait over her shoulder. ‘His only knowledge of autism is most likely
Rain Man
.’

    ‘The rain man?’

    ‘The film. Dustin Hoffman.’ She peers at me and snorts. ‘Don’t say you’ve never seen it! Everyone has seen it! Where have you been all your life? This is why you’re so impossible!’

    ‘Because I don’t know the rain man?’

    She takes my face in her hands, rests her forehead against mine. ‘You OK?’

    I feel the hard press of bone against bone, the slide of skin as I nod.

    ‘It is quite appropriate though.’

    ‘What is?’ She rests her head on my shoulder.

    ‘The rain man. I go a bit peculiar if it rains; very peculiar, in my teenage years. Richard’s heard about it at great length from Susie, I expect.’

    ‘A bit peculiar?’

    ‘I used to run about, rip my clothing, refuse to wash, scream and yell. Generally unpleasant. My father thought I was psychotic from smoking too much dope.’

    Some time I might try and tell her about it properly. Some time. Not now.

    ‘Has Richard warned you off me?’

    ‘A very cosy chat we had. Told him I was using your youthful body for some better than average sex.’ Her breath is moist in my ear.

    ‘Wish I
had
said that.’ She exhales, her body suddenly limp. ‘God, I’m worn out.’ She yawns. ‘Andrew, they’re thinking of coming down to The Siding – talking about it anyway – when Susie finally comes out of hospital. I did remind everybody it’s your home at the moment, and suggested they should ask you before they make plans to descend in hordes.’

    ‘Richard and Susie?’

    ‘No. Not Richard. The plan is for your mother to come over to help Susie recuperate, to look after the Boys from Hell. And they, Susie and your mother, want Hoggie there too. She’s been a fantastic go-between these last few weeks, stopped things getting awkwardly emotional. But there isn’t room at The Vicarage. Plus I get the distinct impression Richard is a bit pissed off that your mother has turned up like the proverbial.’