The Song House (27 page)

Were he to have the conversation William so desperately
wanted, he would tell him that he’s not forgetting at all; on
the contrary, he’s just making room, letting the past take precedence
for a while. He’s discovered that his memories aren’t
fixed, that he can’t control what comes in. It’s like the weather;
he can watch it, he can feel it, but he can’t alter it. But nor
can he fix on how he would like his memories to look, how
he might describe them in words: thinks if only he could it
would be easy. He imagines seeing inside his own head, into
the inner workings of his mind. There was a programme about
it once, how you can have a scan which shows the brain lit up
like a fairground ride. Kenneth thinks his brain would be dark,
with winding corridors, trapdoors, like the ghost train, or a
dungeon. He follows this thread, now, satisfied he’s found a
way to visualize the invisible, and puts up no resistance to the
thoughts meandering in and out. Here’s his mind then, a dark
cell – no, many, many cells – the shape of a panopticon; each
cell positioned so that the prisoner is available for scrutiny. A
thousand former Kenneths jostling for space. He would be
the gaoler, too, an idea he relishes for the power it bestows.
He’s there as overseer, to keep his memories from escaping,
wreaking havoc, murdering each other. He thinks he’s the only
person in the world to have this thought. He considers making
a note of it but can’t be bothered to move.

For now, he listens to the hollow, emptied-out sound of the
opening bars, more an ending than a start, and lets it sweep
over him. He feels the music as he never has before, with perfection,
and anguish. It’s only sensation; no rainy-day memory to
examine or relive, although he knows he first heard the piece
the year after its release, and played it regularly for months, to
calm him sometimes, sometimes to take him away. Still nothing
occurs to him. As he holds his hands up, waiting for the words
to drop out of them, he understands that he has no words. A
welcome wave of fatigue laps over his body. Closing his eyes,
Kenneth rests his head back, drops his hands into his lap, and
listens to the change in tone; cautious now, full of doubt: the
spaces in between seem to ask him questions.

Are you sure you’re doing the right thing? What about the
boy? How will he cope, at this difficult time? Kenneth’s answer
is to remain silent. He doesn’t know how Will might feel about
him going away, only that he must. Rusty has revealed herself
and he, in turn, has been honest with her. At first, wanting to
patch things up – because they always patched things up, didn’t
they? – he thought there might be a way forward. But she was
so contemptuous, so reproachful when he mentioned Grace.

Grace? The nanny? How unoriginal. It’ll be the stable boy
next.

There was no stable boy, of course, no horses. She was being
ridiculous. But then he realized that it was he who was ridiculous.
And stupid, and vain, so utterly selfish. His answer was to
run away. Except at the time it didn’t feel like running away;
he was simply trying to make a life out of a mess.

The knocking on the record becomes his footsteps echoing
through the hall, and Will, a slight, shadowy figure behind him,
anxious, it seemed, for his father to be gone. And then he was
in the cab, being taken off up the drive, his son waving briefly
from the step, then dashing off quickly, like a cartoon boy.
The knocking is louder, more emphatic; and here’s the lull now,
a not-quite-silence, just as suddenly eclipsed by the euphoria,
the swift ecstatic cry of release. He was on his way to Bahrain;
he was going to be free! There would be no more Rusty, the
charade that was his marriage, the stifling presence of the boy.
Such blissful release, whooping for joy inside, and his body
jittering with the pure joy noise coming from the record, pure
joy, only that, all that, joy so immense and sublime it is also a
sorrow: and slowly he travels over the curve of sorrow; so many
tears, so much rain, the widest ripple on the pond, a gradual
expansion into nothingness.

He emerges to the sound of applause, and to repetition, repetition,
such insistent repetition; the insistent repetition of the
rhythm, and the rhythm becomes music, and the music sings
the motion of a train on a track. From the window of the
carriage he sees Maggie, very small, very far away, standing on
the river towpath, a bright red stain on the collar of her blouse.
From a crushed insect, a spider mite or beetle. And then she’s
gone and there is just sweeping scenery, yellow and brown and
arid and baked, and the insistent repetition of the rhythm
returns and inside it there’s singing, there’s shouting; it’s
William, in his Boys’ Brigade uniform, cradling something
in his arms. He’s landed a carp. The river man’s at his side,
squinting at him with those eyes of his just two slits under his
cap. They’re on a dredger. Not a carp, a man’s arm, a tear in
the shoulder, ready to spill. Blood pooling in a long line from
the sleeve. No. He’s holding a child. Pink mouth open and
wet. The rhythm pauses and resumes and the image of the child
is carried away by the insistence of the rhythm. And the clouds
race over the sky above the big house on the hill inside which
in the library in the chair sits Kenneth. Kenneth sits in the
chair in the library inside the big house on the hill and the
clouds race over the sky.

He is fully awake now. He remains entirely motionless, eyes
wide, his mind fixed on the images in his head. The concert
is in its third phase, the rhythm still insistent, but the melody
plaintive, full of longing. A different picture emerges with the
sound: here is the countryside, in darkness, lights from the
towns flying past, a covert bonfire glowing in a field, a funfair
in a valley where the big wheel is lit like a jewelled crown.
Here is the train again, but he’s returning this time, suitcase
forgotten, probably still on the tarmac at Heathrow, and he’s
stepping back down onto the platform at Newbury station and
the stale air hits him in a blast of fumes and failure. He was so
close.

His mouth is very dry. He leans forward and finds his glass.

The heat: the impossible, unremitting dryness of the heat
that summer he’d decided to leave. Fish drowning in dry
riverbeds, the fields going up instantly, as if sparked from under
the earth. Words couldn’t describe it, though the very same
words were used over and over, as if repeating them brought
them closer to the truth: baking, scorching, flaming. It was
dryness and tiredness, and the air was second-hand and there
was the smell, constant and toxic, of burnt paper in the atmosphere.
There were no clouds. There was no breeze: standing
on the porch on the morning he left, looking over the lawns
into another clear sunrise, saying goodbye to the house, and
struggling to get a breath. People said, At least you’ll be prepared
for Bahrain, and laughed, as if the heat was a joke, or
he was, or the idea of going. He knew there would be something
to stop him; understood there would be no escape, that
no one escapes, not really, try as hard as they might to climb
out. In the end they just fall back down into the hole.

Keith Jarrett plays on. Kenneth hears the piano as the bells
of the church in which he and Rusty were married, and hears
how much he loved her. How pale she looked as the bells rang
out, as the photographer posed them here and there in the
shadow of the lychgate. Just as a new bride ought to look. He
couldn’t believe his luck.

The house felt empty on his return. It was filled with darkness.
He paused in the hall like a stranger and the clock ticked
and the sound his footsteps made on the staircase beat time
with his heart.

Rusty was in her room. He didn’t forget to knock, he
just chose not to, opening the door and finding her at the
dressing table. She was drawing the spike of an earring from
her earlobe.

He’s in his room, she said, turning to look at him and then
swivelling back to her own reflection, I do not want to see
him.

Kenneth noticed she was heavily made-up, and dressed as if
she’d just returned from an evening out.

What have you done?

Did he say that? Didn’t he mean, What has
he
done?

And she swung round again, her beautiful face a long thin strip
of hatred, and said,

Me? I lost a baby. Hang me for it.

William has cancelled Nat; he thinks about calling his father,
holding the handset to his chest as he paces the living room.
The view from his window is slashed with diagonal blurts of
rain. Through it he sees the surrounding towers have lost their
shape; they are flattened by the darkness, the individual apartments
illuminated here and there into a mosaic of colours, like
a Klee painting. He imagines the people inside them going about
their lives, cooking, watching television, arguing, making love,
and he is sick with loneliness and longing. He thinks of Sonny,
how thick his fur was, how trusting his eyes, his soft mouth;
wonders how anyone could have believed him.

Alison doesn’t bother to ring the bell; she peers in through the
front window, looking for signs of life. Not a shadow, not a
flicker of movement within. Holding her umbrella sideways,
she presses a pearly ear to the cold glass and listens.

This is how Kenneth sees her, backlit in the faint glow from
the carriage lamps, like a neighbour eavesdropping through a
wall.

Clear off! I said no Gypsies!

Sensing his shadow in the hallway, the ghost of Kenneth passing
the clock, Alison thinks he’s making one of his jokes. But
the wait – presumably he’s gone to find the key? – gets longer,
and the rain bouncing up from the gravel is speckling her
ankles.

William should get you certified, she yells, rapping her
knuckles on the window. When he doesn’t reappear, she decides
to try round the back of the house, to get in through the courtyard
or the terrace. Except the gate in the adjoining wall is
locked, and on the terrace side, a veiled moon shows her the
steps are under water. Alison paces the driveway, unsure of what
to do next. She’d promised William, but if he won’t let her in,
what can she do? There’s the sound of a sash sliding open with
a fierce clap, and then there’s Kenneth, poking his head out of
an upstairs window.

How now, you secret, black, and midnight hag, he shouts.
His face is impossible to read, but he’s not so far away that she
can’t smell the whisky coming off him.

Actually, dear, I’m the eight o’clock hag. I was thinking you
might need rescuing. I did phone, several times.

A knell that summons me to Heaven or Hell.

You can pretend all you like, Kenneth, you don’t fool me.
But William is worried, she says, to the blunt shape above her,
What with the valley cut off and you up here alone. That’s
William your son, by the way, not Shakespeare. He asked me
to call. Well, I’ve called.

When Kenneth doesn’t answer, she makes one last attempt.

Oh, and I’ve had a change of heart about witnessing your
will. Call it an ‘advance decision’ on my part, but I don’t think
you’re entirely
compos mentis
.

He is down the stairs and has the door thrown wide before
she has even got back in the car.

Open Sesame, she says, shaking the droplets from her umbrella,
Now, shall we talk?